A new day, a new wanderer, the same wastes
by Project Fallout
Summary: Delve back into the wasteland, 20 years after the lone wanderer came in, destroyed and rebuilt the capital wasteland. A time when the Enclave runs the east coast with an iron fist. Witness a new chapter, and see how old allies play once the chips are down
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Opening:**

Imagine that time is little more than a clock. Now turn that clock back to the 1950's; the world is recovering from the Second World War, communism is flourishing in eastern Europe, and the days of Apple Pie and Happiness are upon us, and you'll see the starting point of the setting of this world. This is the time period in which the current time-line deviates from our setting. In this time, Technology makes great strides in terms of power and intelligence, and biological warfare is harnessed greatly. Cars running off of Hydrogen Fusion, hovering combat robots equipped with plasma guns and flamethrowers, and most importantly, Armors that could stand up to a tank with ease, titled Power Armor; have become commonplace. The government is working on a way to survive nuclear warfare and disease. These are only a few of the advancements this world has made over ours. But, these great things come and a terrible price, turn the clock on this new reality forward to October 23, 2077. The world has fallen apart; Communism in Asia is still remaining steadfast, world resources of oil and Uranium have all but run out, The United Nations has been disbanded, The United States has been reformed into 13 commonwealths, Canada has been violently annexed, and Europe has reverted to a New Dark Age, having little to survive on anymore, and to top it all off, the world is about to, in a few short hours, be devastated by nuclear warfare. Thousands are saved in huge underground fallout shelters, Vaults as they are called, but most end up dead or worse due to incredibly terrible things done to sabotage the vaults. Almost all of the vaults were insane social experiments; gender ratios, neurotoxins, biological super-viruses, combat training, and these are just scratching the surface. The dweller's sanity broke down, most within ten years, twenty tops. A few vaults that were set as control vaults, such as 101 and 13, managed to beat the average by about 180 years, but only because they broke the rules in some way, shape, or form. Outside the vaults though, that was a different story, in the early weeks after the bombs fell, the world fell under a great atmospheric event, known forever in those few souls who survived as the Black Rain. Highly radioactive rain, created from the ash and soot that had risen from the devastation, plagued the entire earth for many days; afterward it wouldn't rain for close to 250 years. Afterwards, the world became a dead wasteland, clean water was a dream, and every time you turned around the world was trying to put a bullet in the back of your skull, doesn't sound quite as pleasant as at first, huh? Many who survived the actual bombs and the radiation afterwards became horribly mutated, resembling corpses, they would become known as ghouls, both feral and sane. Ghouls would be discriminated against as a new race which humans, commonly nicknamed by ghouls 'smoothskins', frequently believed to be nothing more than brainless zombies, often not regarding them any different than their feral brethren. But humans were not the only ones to survive the bombs, while most of the earth's species had been exterminated, some in a sense, evolved into incredibly deadly predators. The remaining government had become so corrupt it was basically a new spin on the Nazi regime. Things had changed drastically in such a short amount of time. And I'm here to record the aftermath of these events as one of many survivors.

_Prologue_

_War. War never changes. Since the dawn of human kind when our ancestors discovered the killing power of rock and bone, blood has been shed for anything from god, to justice, to simple psychotic rage. In the year 2077, after millennia of armed conflict, the destructive nature of man could sustain itself no longer, and the world was plunged into an abyss of nuclear fire and radiation. But it was not as most had pictured the end of the world, but simply the prologue to another gruesome chapter in human history. But war, war never changes. In the early days, thousand were spared the horrors of the holocaust by taking refuge in enormous underground shelters, known as vaults. But when they emerged they had only the hell of the wastes to greet them. Humanity's last supposed hope, and this way of saving the human race had been in vain, though, the creators of these shelters systematically designed each of the vaults to fail, and few ever were able to respond to an all clear signal. But humanity's great desire to survive gave humans not sealed in vaults the ability to somehow survive throughout the greatest trials any human had ever experienced. They were granted the ability and psychological strength to survive in quite literally, a hell on earth. The creatures of the world had been changed from peaceful, nomadic creatures to dangerous and vile hunters able to kill a human in one swift strike. Our hero was born into this hell, and was by the grace of god, capable of saving it. He changed this hell into a livable place again. But there were many who attempted to shatter our hopes of peace and happiness. Infamous factions that plagued the earth since the bombs fell and ever since…Now for the most part eradicated, but small pockets of the stronger ones stand firm against decades of force. Some, in response, have sealed their doors forever, never allowing anyone entrance…These strongholds are a nuisance if little else, except one fortress off the coast of the NCR. The Enclave oil rig, destroyed twice, rebuilt on dead brotherhood corpses each time, the legend is…the Enclave and their hostilities towards the mutated peoples of the world has led them down a road of chaos and isolation. About 60 years ago, a small division of the brotherhood went rogue, and eventually sold the eastern brotherhood down the river, in a manner of speaking. We branded them Outcasts, and most either were killed in the wasteland, or joined the Enclave's upper ranks. Few returned to the Brotherhood of Steel, but those who did, such as our hero's father would grow to become legends. Our hero had a strained relationship with his father, as he knew his father for 13 years as a vile, cynical man who believed that the only way to save the world was to burn it to the ground and start from scratch. They didn't acknowledge the other as father or son, even now, they simply identify one another more as comrades fighting for the same goal in different ways. Our hero's father was a hero just the same as his son would become, but merely hit a few, very bloody, bumps in the road. In recent years, a band of Neo-Outcasts as the call themselves, became the closest things we had to a real threat anymore. They had destroyed areas of mass importance, recovered technology for the Enclave from Adam's Air force base that was of legend, and most of all, for three weeks, they compromised the power grid in the Mojave Wasteland, giving a chance for the Mariposa super mutants to strike back, one last time. Combat ended with minimal losses on either side, but massive damage done to power producing areas of the NCR. Above the despicable scum that was the remnants of the Enclave and Outcasts there were three beyond infamous Brothers in Arms who ran the Enclave, the Neo-Outcasts, and the remnants of the Mariposa Super Mutants from the sidelines. Protector Henry Isaac Casdin, last of the Original Outcasts, Casdin over the years had suffered massive radiation damage and was believed to have been exposed to large amounts of FEV, and it's an old urban legend he never takes off his helmet for fear of being shot down by his own men. Colonel Augustus Martin Autumn, current head of the Enclave, and a real old bastard. After the Oil rig collapsed the first time, thanks to the chosen one, his father was killed in the fight. Autumn would become an emotionless man bent on revenge against a harsh wasteland; the Colonel would raise Raven Rock in capital wasteland, and eventually rebuild the Enclave oil rig. And lastly, Director Robert Christian Lee, former head of the now abandoned Bethesda Biological Research Facility. This psycho is a real piece of work, while the other two have been around for a few decades wreaking havoc, this crazy son-of-a-bitch has been around since before the bombs fell, used a vile poison used to kill FEV infected cells and he modified it, to use a chemical reaction that would retain normal human body cells replication rate and not slow at all, so that he could live forever. He is our hero's archenemy even above the Colonel and the Protector, because he's the one in the very end who calls the shots and runs the show. Mariposa was his creation, he also designed the schematics for the oil rig that would become the Enclave base, and sent a anonymous message to The Brotherhood of Steel 80 years ago suggesting they head east and scourge the Pitt. So, in a way, he created the Super Mutants, the Enclave, and the Outcasts. This Sick man's infamy is known above all others, a larger threat than the Master himself and more despicable than the lowly raiders who kill anything they see._

**Chapter 1: First encounters**

Screams were heard down the hall. The power surged, and the screams stopped. I was a young man at that point, and had had a very strained relationship with my father, but it still wasn't a pleasant thing to hear my father being violently electrocuted for a crime I thought I knew. I was so happy I didn't have to witness it, or at least I thought I would be. I have lived in this base for as long as I can remember, and all of my memories are of the ice cold iron walls that surrounded the base. The only thing warm about this place was the flamethrowers blast when suppressing riots, and the sun beating down on your neck. The people weren't friendly, the slop they called food was ice cold, and no matter how hot it felt from the sun, the iron walls of the fortress never rose a degree.

My name is Jack E. Brown and my father was the legendary lone wanderer. He was the infamous bastard who burned the capital wasteland to the ground and rebuilt it from the ground up, only to be taken away from his work and locked away here for 13 years. But regardless he was my father, and regardless had just been violently killed. The soldier who approached me after the execution asked me to retrieve my father's personal belongings and take them with me when I exited.

I knew the only thing he had was a journal of his past, things that could be used to destroy the wasteland many times over, and judging by the look on the man's face, they were quite interested in that prospect. I took the journal, and as I was leaving decided to use a few of my tricks I had been taught as a bit of self insurance. By the time I left, there was an electronics disabler in place, along with enough C-4 to blow the place higher than a strung out drug addict. I walked out the main gates proudly with Tesla Soldiers each giving one another signals and arming themselves to prepare for the next few minutes behind me. They knew I wasn't going to go down without a fight, I would fight them to the grave. The years outside the cell of a father who hated the Enclave allowed my animosity towards them to grow and flourish. Now that these men had killed my father for something I never knew, the animosity had grown up into full hatred and desire for blood. I was determined to escape, and destroy these people forever.

When I hit the last main gate to the civilian barracks an Enclave Officer I knew well stopped me and asked, "Would you kindly show me your identification sir?" When I told him that it was me and that he knew me, all he said was,

"Sorry Jack, orders are orders. If I don't stop you here, they kill me. I'd let you go if I could, but I have orders, now would you kindly show me your I.D.?" The officer was a polite gentleman, strictly business for most, but he and I had grown up together. He was 10 when I arrived so we grew up as the only two children on the base.

My only response was "Sorry Andrew, but I have to keep my father's secrets safe from those who need them." I flipped the trigger for the E.M.P. and seconds later I heard Andrew's radio go nuts.

"WE NEED HELP! THE LOCKS HAVE DISENGAGED! NO! STAY BACK! HHHHHEEEEEEEEE_" The radio went static at first and then dead silent. The voice of an old man broke the silence.

"_Officer Andrew Ryan, your orders stand. Complete the objective."_

We both sighed and shook hands; he handed me his old 10mm submachine-gun, and I proceeded to leave. Our last words to each other were,

"Andrew, if you ever get tired of these old coots and old man Autumn upstairs, there will always be a place for you in my shack."

"…Take care of yourself Jack. If I live to see the day when we're both old men, would you kindly get touch with me?"

I never understood why he said 'would you kindly' in every request of his, but nonetheless he was a good man. I ran up to the military truck I drove around base and tossed the submachine gun in the back, and picked up my Thompson and my dad's old mask, put on the mask and opened fire randomly to deter being followed. All they would see is a madman in a Turkish mask with a Tommy gun blowing crap to pieces. I felt in that minute, a bond between father and son that I had always heard about, but never truly felt. As my father before me I had bitten off more than I could chew, taking on the entire Adam's Air Force Base by myself, except rather than breaching in order to complete a mission, I was a prisoner, desperate for escape. As I ran lower on ammo I tossed it in the back and picked up my father's M1014, fired off two shots, reloaded, and drove off. At that point everyone was either dead, occupied, or too scared to contend with me. I rolled up to the access gate to civilian quarters to stock up, and because that's the only way out.

I had an Enclave officer's uniform and hat on, so the guard just thought I was your standard officer until he was pumped full of a twenty gauge shotgun shell. I saw the guys I had grown up with approach me, but not to ask for a ride out, but rather to give me a hand with the stocked up weapons cache I had hidden in a pre-war cellar. After the gear was loaded, I hopped onto the bed of the truck and handed them several assault rifle and a couple of RPG-7s.

One of the wastelanders asked me "What's this all about?"

I smiled at him and said while climbing through a window, "There ain't no rest for the wicked. Now go in there and give em hell."

I drove right into the barricades with the truck, they didn't stand a chance. I had soldiers chasing me down with flaming artillery, so I jammed the shotgun on the gas and took out the Fat Man and 8 Mini-Nukes I had stolen from the armory, and climbed onto the roof armed it and stuffed them all in there so I wasn't constantly reloading. I launched the one, and all 8 fired off perfectly, and I realized they had gotten the Experimental MIRV my father had found in the National Guard Depot. Those who weren't killed in the initial explosion were delayed long enough by the wall of nuclear explosions, that I had gotten enough ground between me and the soldiers that they wouldn't be able to find me. After I escaped the headquarters of the, at the time, extremely dominant Enclave, I parked the truck and opened my dad's old notebook.

This old thing had seen years, maybe even decades of use and abuse. The thing was old, weathered, scorched; but that was what gave it it's charm to a degree. The thing was surprisingly organized and well kept on the inside, other than the rings left from my old man's shot glass of whiskey. I flipped through it and found a few clear pictures of the military base I had just escaped among dozens of blurry ones where my old man was being shot at by Tesla Soldiers. I discovered to my surprise that the base had grown significantly since it destroyed the citadel. My dad had all the old routes mapped out to the inch, every patrol and every weak point mapped out and even had a few play-by-plays for either one person, or a large squadron of people.

_This was another one of my father's infamous achievements. In his early years before his capture, he had gone on a destructive tirade directed towards the brotherhood of steel after they overtook his father's laboratory and threw his dead body into the river in the madness. My father slaughtered hundreds of Enclave and Brotherhood alike. If you wore power armor that wasn't black and red, you were best to steer clear of him, however, he never laid a hand on Elder Lyons. Elder Lyons was his closest friend other than Charon, and the Elder was his mentor. He worked for Elder Lyons and took orders from him, but out of the sight of Lyons, he slaughtered the old man's troops like they were livestock. One of his last official brotherhood operations was to infiltrate Adam's Air Force Base and destroy it. In the end, he betrayed the brotherhood, sending down the intended airstrike on the citadel, rather than the Air Force Base. In the last minutes before the airstrike on the Citadel came down, he gave a radio signal to the old man, begging him to head to GNR. He did, and sure enough, it saved his life. But ever since that fateful evening when he violently destroyed the Citadel, Adam's Air Force Base grew to incredible strengths. It would become known as the East Coast Oil Rig much later, but it was a massive complex even by this point in time._

From here, I was planning a tactical invasion of Raven Rock, using that as the foundation to take on A.A.F.B and further unite the east coast. I flipped through the book looking for notes on raven rock, when I heard a voice behind me.

"I've gotta say kid, you've got guts; to take on all of Adam's Air Force base singlehandedly and actually scare them into submission, you have skill, but it's in the blood I suppose." I pointed a .44 magnum at the man behind me, tossing the journal to the side and he chuckled, "Is that any way to treat your makeshift uncle? Threatening me with a revolver that isn't cocked or loaded for that matter? You're a decent deceiver, but I can spot an unloaded gun a mile away." I spun around to see an aged ghoul I had never even seen before, let alone was related to. He smiled and said "You would probably remember me better if I still had skin, but the radiation I've been exposed to kills that hope. And even so, you still haven't seen me in anything other than photos since you were a very young kid."

"Who are you, what's your name?" I prepared to verify in the journal but it was gone. The old ghoul was quite tall and clearly faster than I had anticipated. A few moments later he opened the book and flashed it like a badge. An entire 2 pages was devoted to him, including several pictures, and a lot of small writing.

"My name is Charon; I'm your father's closest friend. And, against everything I stand for, have been assigned to retrieve you for your father, deliver you safely to the capital wasteland, and get you trained in basic combat. However, judging by the show I saw back at the prison sector of the base, something tells me we can start with more advanced techniques." I was simply stunned at first. He had tailed me for twenty miles without a vehicle, keeping himself under the radar the whole time, and even knew my revolver wasn't loaded, I was outright floored. Then something clicked in the back of my mind and threw it on the front burner.

"Wait. You said deliver me to my father. My father was just given the chair this morning. If you are who you say you are, you should know that…" By this point I had the revolver loaded with 3 shots. I armed the revolver and pointed it at the ghoul. In a flash, he grabbed the revolver chamber aimed it at his head and knelt down like a prisoner, his eyes glaring down at the ground.

He spoke in a tone like he was bargaining for his life, "Go ahead and shoot me in the head like I'm a brain-eating zombie. But your father is alive. All you heard were screams and a witnessed a power surge. For all you know, it could have been anyone in that chair. And this measly journal isn't the reason your old man should be 6 feet under right now. In fact..." was all he said as he struck a match with his spare hand and ignited the book. I watched, tears in my eyes as the piece of infamy and plethora of information burned. I had known it for years as the reason my life had been hell, just burn. Just like any old book, it burned to a black charcoal, completely and utterly destroyed.

_Or so I would think for a long time._


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: New Allies and Future Opponents**

He was sobbing. He had lost his composure over the news. Even though I was generally a stone cold killer, I was raised to have a heart. I picked him up, laid him in the bed of the truck, still sobbing uncontrollably mind you, and got into the cab and started the truck up. I knew we needed to be to megaton before nightfall, because once that sun falls over the capital wasteland horizon, all hell breaks loose. The raiders come out, the vertibirds patrol the skies, and every type of beast comes out for its dinner.

_These are from the journals written by Charon. Different parts of this story have been pieced back together from isolated records of individual people. This has taken 30 years to construct, finding these journals took 20 of that._

I knocked on the back window, only to find him leaned up against the cab wall. All I said was, "It's almost nightfall, reload that Tommy gun and prepare to hold them off of us until we get back to megaton."

"Who?" was the boy's only word.

"Everyone" was the response.

As the sun set over the behind Tenpenny tower, we knew we were still an hour away by truck. We saw groups of people begin to emerge from old buildings to the southeast of us. The boy took a few warning shots at them, but that only attracted their attention, and much to our dismay, one was carrying an old RPG-7. We floored it, but a rocket keeps up with a truck fairly easily. The missile hit the back of the truck and took it out; I had to pull the Jack's unconscious body from the fiery truck before it hit the gunpowder in the weaponry. I tried to wake him up, but he was going to be out for a good while. Unfortunately I had larger fish to fry at this point. The raiders that had blown up the truck weren't sure if they had finished the job and regardless wanted the ear from jack and the finger from me, knowing they could sell them off for an incredibly high amount. So, I pulled over the helm of the suit I was wearing underneath my old leather armor. I watched my hands shimmer away into the dirt beneath me. The old stealth armor worked as good as ever. I pulled out my old officer's sword, slipped around them and sliced their throats. After that, I picked up Jack, and started walking back. When we reached Megaton the kid was still out, as I passed under the thin metal walkway, Casdin gave an informal salute and went back to his post guarding the gate.

_Back in the founder's early days, the Enclave took over everything. We had to come back together as Brotherhood and Outcast alike simply to defend ourselves from them. Megaton had gone from small trader town to underground city. People who are infamous now as having slaughtered thousands were close allies in those times. During these years, everyone had no choice but work together or die. The Raiders and Talon Company Mercs were the only big factions that weren't eradicated that didn't come together with us. They burned Oasis to the ground, Reilly's rangers fled to point lookout, Paradise Falls was violently overtaken, with Eulogy Jones fighting to the grave. Those who couldn't work with the rest of us were killed off, unless they were an advantage to the Enclave. But during those days, we were all stuck under one roof or under six feet of dirt._

I carried Jack into Moriarty's saloon, waved hello to Gob the ghoul bartender, a rather close friend and strolled up to Moriarty with Jack over my shoulder.

"What the hell do ya think you're doing bringing a corpse into my bar, Charon?" was his way of saying hello.

_Colin Moriarty is an old man who owns a Saloon of the same name. He is a heavy drinker, rude speaker, but is a cunning and wise old man. The man has seen all 3 generations of Wanderers pass through, one with a crying baby, one looking for his father, and now one being carried in._

"Moriarty, this is Jack, Steven's son." Moriarty's expression hadn't changed in the face but you could see the happiness in his eyes, but however underneath all the liquor he was a man with a big heart. Moriarty was Jack's Godfather considering all he did for Jack's father over the years.

"Well, I'll be damned. Moira and Steven's son you say? The one that's my godchild? Is he dead?"

"Nope. Some raiders hit the truck with a rocket outside of Fairfax. He was in the back of the truck trying to hold them off. Knocked him right out of the park, I figured we might do well to wake him up with some of that British Tea that your father got before you two came to the states. I've heard from Steven that it's twice as effective as tossing him off the balcony upstairs."

"Damn right it's twice as effective and good thing you came when you did, a buyer offered me a thousand caps for the last bottle, but it isn't going to come cheap, _cheaper _maybe. But it definitely will not be cheap. Pony up fifteen hundred caps and the last bottle is yours. I'll allow barter only because he's my godchild."

"FIFTEEN HUNDRED CAPS! Are you out of your drunken mind! Even with barter that still means handing over enough ammo to keep the brotherhood armed for the next six months!" And then I realized why he wanted to barter; because he knew as well as I did that ammo was more limited now than in the past years and it's demand was way up. Moriarty was a shroud business man who knew how to keep the money flowing through his saloon, even if it meant selling to other merchants in town. That included Moira and the new fella that lives in the air plane jet that's above Lucas' and Harden's house. Moira sold everything, while the other guy was a weapon dealer and ammo maker. He made rarer shells in comparison to standard shells I trade off for my supply of vodka, but Moriarty knew good and well that the gentleman needed standard shells too. I smiled and said "Alright, but I'm fresh out of standard shells, sold the last of my supply over to some merchants in exchange for a few schematics and several new pieces of power armor. Can you take these drone cannons as trade?"

Moriarty looked at me angrily and said "Boy, if you weren't the man who buys my entire inventory of vodka, I'd draw a gun and have you out of my store, over the railing, and into the crater. But alas, since you do, I can't, now can I? Fine, give me what you've got and the tea is yours."

"See? Was that so hard?" I pulled opened a cellar door and pulled out a few drone cannons for the old man. I grab an old note I had written with it and glanced at it, it read

'_Only sell to Moriarty if you need the last of the British Tea!'_

Naturally, I laughed at the note I had left myself so many years ago, handed the cannons over to Moriarty, and grabbed the bottle. Now I knew this was a delicate thing, simply because if this stuff went down badly, he would be severely poisoned by it. So, I got Nova and Gob to give me a hand propping him up so it was a clear shot. After we got him propped up right I used a funnel to pour it down his throat.

**Chapter 3: The big players on the surface**

Things were blurred at first, all I saw was a metal cone, and tasted Iron. Then, a bottle popped open, and I felt it before I tasted it rolling down my throat. It was sickeningly sweet, but extremely bitter, and it felt like someone had kicked me in the head. Before I realized what I had done, I had spit out the funnel, kicked one blur in the face, and elbowed the other two blurs in their noses. It was all still a huge blur so I ran for the stairs, and when I got up them, I leapt down from above and tackled some poor gentleman. At that point it went black again, but I could still hear things.

'What the hell is going on in here? Maggie is beating down the door of my house over the racket! Someone care to explain?'

'Harden, sorry about the racket, we had a bit of an incident with Moriarty's old bottle of tea…'

'Charon, I thought you said you'd only buy that bottle in order to rise the fucking dead, you remember how bad of a number it did on Steven…'

'Well, I figured it would be better to get Jack out of his coma instead of carrying him everywhere.'

'Jack? As in this is Steven's son Jack? Well I'll be damned.'

I blinked my eyes open to see the three gentlemen standing over me. I was in too much pain to speak up though. They continued on their talking,

"Look I'm not happy about how it went down either, the kid in the blind insanity that surged through him broke my nose and gave Gob and Nova alike bloody noses. Not to mention belly flopped on Jericho. And knowing all three of them, I'm paying for Doc Church to fix them up."

"Charon, I don't care about what you're doing so long as you keep it quiet. Because if I have to come back in here, you'll have more than a broken nose and a drunk 19 year old to deal with."

The sheriff was a younger man, big beard, wore a cowboy hat and a regulator duster and had an attitude that was too big for his britches. With the age of them, I'd believe they were hand-me-downs from his father, who I assume was Lucas Simms, the first real body of government in the capital wasteland, according to dad. My eyes drifted around the room to see that everyone else had gone other than those injured, Moriarty, Charon and Harden.

"Well since you've done driven off my patrons for the evening, I ought to close up for the night, congrats you two lazy bums get the rest of the evenin' off. It won't happen again for a long time so enjoy it."

Moriarty headed for the door and prepared to put his key in it to lock it and then the door flew open and knocked him down, a woman walked in and gave Charon and Harden a yelling worth remembering.

"Are you out of your minds! It's three in the morning and this racket is keeping everyone in town up, unlike you twits, some of us have to have our stores open tomorrow morning to supply the town so it doesn't go under! So someone care to explain why the hell there is so much racket at three in the morning. It normally reaches its peak in decibels around 11!" The woman glanced around the circle of gentlemen and screamed

"WELL! WHAT THE HECK IS THIS COMMOTION ABOUT?"

I finally had the ability to speak again, "I'm terribly sorry ma'am, this ordeal would happen to be my fault."

Everyone looked down at me lying on the floor, Moriarty was laughing, picking himself up from getting knocked down, Charon was happy to see I was alive and a bit nervous for some reason, and the woman was awestruck.

She walked up to me, knelt down, and touched my face lightly mumbling

"Is that you, Jack…?" She started crying.

I was perplexed. Charon walked over comforting her saying "It's alright Moira, he hasn't seen you in a very long time. He's been with Steven for the last 13 years…" At that point I realized who she was, it was my mom. I picked myself up and stumbled over to her and hugged her.

"It's nice to see you mom." She kissed me on the cheek and just was so overwhelmed with happiness. Unfortunately, our reunion was short lived… Sirens were blaring outside.

**Chapter 4: The Siege of the Eagle.**

The Enclave was conducting a search of the city. Vertibirds swooped down from the skies and soldiers stormed the gates. They were looking for Jack, and we both knew it. It appeared there were twenty soldiers, with 3 officers and one man in a overcoat, probably Colonel Autumn.

_With the Brotherhood's help, Steven, Lucas, Moriarty, and I designed a perfect false cover, an abandoned town. Steven and I staged a false massacre by faking Moira's death, and in the grieving he slaughtered the entire town supposedly and then went cannibalistic and devoured the corpses of the citizens. When the Enclave came for him, Jack and I were sitting downstairs playing chess and I pointed a route up the stairs and said 'follow the bones', of course, I wasn't expecting little Jack to go running after his father when the enclave took him away in chains. There was one moment that I proceeded to laugh at for years to come, Colonel Autumn pushed the young child down when he was trying to follow them and little six year old Jack pulled a little .32 pistol out and was using all his strength simply to keep it up, and he fired the pistol's clip into Autumn's right leg. And as Autumn went to shoot the child, Steven whispered something in Autumn's ear that made him stop dead in his tracks and sent shivers down my spine._

"_If you put your finger on that trigger, I swear I'll be out in a day, and I assure you won't live to see the end of the week."_

_To this day Jack still carries that pistol in his boot, and Colonel Autumn walks with a cane._

As far as the Enclave knew, the only ones still alive were Casdin, Moriarty, and I. Also as far as they knew, Moriarty and I were captives of Casdin's. To them, Casdin went nuts when the raiders took over Fort Independence and slaughtered his group of men and arrived here as a new haven from the wasteland with nothing but a rusty Dragunov, a fusion pulse charge, and enough landmines to assure if he died, anything within the city, or outside for 20 miles died with him. While in truth, the entire city was underground. The brotherhood of steel broke into the abandoned vault 101 and used that as the foundation to build our new citadel, one that spanned underground from the cog door to the abandoned vault 106, and all the way to the Potomac.

We used modified technology traded in from the Pitt through old man Ashur to carve our new underground city, and it turned out pretty damn good. The entire area looked like a air hangar area after we got some custom forged steel imported, once again, courtesy of Ashur. The ordinance we used to hollow out the caverns was imported from all over, we eventually had to contact NCR in New Vegas and the Brotherhood out west to send us enough ordinance to finish construction. They sent us 20 RPGs with a thousand rockets and 500 pounds of C-4. How they negotiated only 2 armored helicopter with a firing squad on board of each and all that 2000 miles to here is a mystery to me.

Thing was that the place felt so impersonal to the people of the wasteland once we got it up that we eventually started carving out tunnels from certain places with blast doors equipped so that those who wanted to sleep in their actual houses on the surface could, and still return back down here to do trade and hide from the Enclave. We developed a air raid siren to use when the Enclave were about to conduct their search. This kept the city safe and our cover solid.

I glanced out the window, terrified, and saw the enclave apply breach charges to every building in the city and from the looks of it, it was all Hellfire and Tesla troops, heavily armed and ready to bring back Jack and Steven back to the base even if it meant in a pair of pine boxes. But now, the Enclave knew Jack was here, and if we hid him, things would get bad. Colin and I had a choice to make, sell Jack down the river and keep the fortress his father made to keep him safe secure, or hide him and risk compromising the last safe haven in the Capital Wasteland. I saw the troopers breach Billy Creel's old house. And I knew if we didn't do something quickly, we were all dead, those above and below.

Colin walked behind the counter of the bar, poured himself the last bit of his tea, and downed it in one gulp.

"Charon, take care of yourself my good friend. And keep my godson out of trouble." Was all he said as he reached for a shiny lever on the old rusty cash register. I jumped for him but I was too late. He had opened the trap door to the city and we were all fell downward into a small tunnel not far below. He waved goodbye as the doors sealed shut.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Five: The Unexpected Martyr**

On this icy winter evening I am sitting in a ruined chair my saloon carved from old sheet metal, I take a sip of his drink and load my aged revolver, spinning the chamber with my fingers. I sigh and turn on an old holotape recorder and begin speaking into it.

" My name is Colin Moriarty. I have spent the last 50 years of my life tending a bar in a barren wasteland along the east coast. My father came over on a boat and a small fortune from his days as a mercenary and a merchant when he grew older. He brought me here from Europe in search of a better place when I was ten and died shortly after we got settled into my current settlement. These are my final words to my family."

I put my hand over the microphone momentarily to cough,

"During the spring when I turned 16, I began a saloon in one of the few settlements in the area. We had steady supply with the caravans that carried equipment around the wasteland to other places. Most of the original group died out on the trail, the second generation of the traders knew where to go and how to get there for the best business. I have seen my share of people come and go, even sadly witnessed people die in my saloon, close allies and enemies alike. But aside from those who came and went, my saloon was always a place of crazy drunkards and merry; and that was fine with me, always was. My saloon was the definition of wasteland living; no clean water, booze, chaos, and people of all places in it. We didn't look down on anyone, the door was always open and a bed open for a nap, if the price was right."

I smiled happily upon reflecting of my past and all my pleasant times behind the counter.

"This rust brown city in the middle of the desert was fine, I never saw a need to go out there. Everything eventually ended up in our city, including the closest things I would ever have to a brother, son, and grandson. James, Steven, and Jack were and are my family. The people in this city are my family, even though they don't live in the actual city anymore. While the city may have been busy twenty years ago, I am now the city's last inhabitant."

I looked upon my once very busy saloon to the now empty and dusty saloon, with only the floors being clean.

"13 years ago, the so called government rolled into the wasteland and started overtaking settlements. Everyday, a man who had access to a working radio station informed of us of which settlement had been taken down next. We ignored it at first, simply sending out scavengers as our eyes and ears in the wastes. Once we lost our contacts out there, we decided it best to work to build a new town."

"Even after we got the new city built,it was along the river, underground, getting everyone to put their problems behind them was, well, problematic. We had constant fights and we were having an even harder time uprooting some of the people from their homes they had inhabited for decades. As much as I hate to say it, when the Enclave, as they had named themselves, bombed Rivet City down towards the basin, they did us a great favor, as it killed relatively few and gave a clear signal to the people of the wasteland. Everyone needed to work together or accept being in a grave by the end of the month. Divided factions put their differences behind them in the hopes of survival but even so we worked hard to keep them in separate sections of the city in order to avoid conflict."

"Unfortunately, we had a problem. If the entire town right to the northeast of the new city just went off the radar, they would be suspicious and start snooping around and at that point we would be doomed because eventually they would find us and even when we came together as a group, we were still horribly outnumbered. Me and my makeshift family would pay the price. Steven staged a massacre in the town, with only myself, at the time, 6 year old Jack, and lastly Charon; being the survivors. They hauled Steven and Jack away to the prison sector of their base to the north for the past 13 years."

"Now they're finally home and I saw them for a few hours before this time has finally arrived. In all of my 65 years on this earth I have never lifted a finger without a price, same as my father, probably the same as his father. Now I prepare to pay the ultimate price to give the ultimate gift to the people of this city, to MY family; survival. These are my last words most likely so I am recording them on this tape recorder for those who I consider close. So they may know why I died, I, Colin Moriarty, The Unexpected Martyr. The likelihood I will survive the next few moments is slim to none. Well they're here. Goodbye Boys."

Vertibirds roared overhead and additional troops stormed the gates and made a great deal of racket. The upper floor is covered with explosives all rigged for when the tape recorder stops.

"The truth is, as Steven put it to me a long time ago when we first met, the only easy day, was in fact, yesterday."

Armored troops broke down the door and charged in, behind them followed the man who forced us into the rabbit-hole, and brought us together; Colonel Augustus Autumn. The colonel and I, much to my dismay, knew one another on a first name basis. The tape recorder has 7 minutes left until it runs out of space and stops. The colonel and I exchange angry looks and shake hands hatefully. The soldiers are in a full metal armor that has a dark green tint to it, while the colonel wears his aged and worn black overcoat. I am in my old blue and white suit.

"Good god Colin that thing looks like it hasn't seen the light of day in twenty years!" The Colonel says to me quite rudely.

"And yours looks like it hasn't been washed since it was made." I retort back with a smile. "So what do you want Augustus?"

"Right to business today? Alright then. Where are they?"

"Who?" I ask halfheartedly.

"Jack and Steven, they escaped this morning. Oh and Charon. The old boy has been missing from his house near the gate."

"Haven't seen them, you really should keep better track of your prisoners up in that base of yours and Charon escaped." I snickered at him while he turned red from embarrassment by his troops' ignorance.

"Cut the crap I know you know where they are Colin."

"Sorry Augustus, but our time is up." I said with a smile.

"What do you mean?" Augustus asked with anger in his voice.

"See you in hell you slimy bastard." I heard the tape recorder click and the explosives detonated above, and fire poured over the rails on the second story and engulfed us all. When the fire cleared, my vision was blurred and I was in agonizing pain. Both the soldiers were dead, but the colonel's body was missing. I was leaned up against the side of my counter looking around frantically for him and I saw him throw a body of one of the soldiers off of him and pick himself up with his pistol in hand. I still had my pistol in my holster but he had the advantage of distance on me. He staggered forward, also quite dazed from the explosion, and tumbled down to my level. He looked me in the eyes and said,

"No matter where you are, no matter how hard you try, you can never fix your mistakes, and you will never kill me."

He shot me twice in the lung and once in the neck. I was bleeding out quickly and used the last of my strength to whisper, "I might not be able to fix them, but I can repay them, and I sure as hell can kill you." with that, I fired my revolver 5 times, all 5 went through his skull and should have killed him individually. While I am positive he died, he has a penchant for living beyond the grave. I glanced at the tape recorder to see it was still recording, and laughed, "That's the wasteland for you, there is always something left, whether it be a bullet, a few minutes worth of audio, or anything else. There is...always something left..." the world began to fade to black and I felt water on my nose, it was raining.

**Chapter Six: The Citadel that Laid Under the Earth**

An explosion and gunfire was heard above. We all mourned in silence for the old man who died to protect the city. I knew better than anyone that to mourn for an extended period of time was to leave yourself defenseless, but a few minutes wouldn't hurt us. I was the first one to speak

"I know he was a good man, but we need to get moving." Both Moira and Jack were in a mix of feelings of shock and despair. But something out of the ordinary happened, a Brotherhood of steel knight came up to us and required I.D.

"All of you bumbling twits down here should know me by now for crying out loud I helped build the place!"

"We heard gunfire in Megaton. We're running emergency checks on everyone, my apologies sir, but your I.D.?"

"I don't have it kid."

"Then I have to take you to the Elder. Direct orders from Paladin Gunny himself."

"Fine. I need to talk with him anyway." I groaned as I agreed to follow the Knight. The soldier punched in a code to the door but it failed to work. I pushed him out of the way saying, "Move initiate. I have this." I punched in a code and the Knight said

"Hey! That's the wrong code!"

"No, it's the right one." The door opened with my name appearing in the I.D. Registry part of the key-code. And as that blast door opened, I saw mine and Steven's handiwork, a giant city under ground, it reminded me a lot of Rivet city now that I look at it from this perspective, but in truth it was a subconscious thing. Steven and I spent a lot of time in Rivet City because of a facility we uncovered nearby that was hidden strangely enough in a Pulowski preservation shelter of all places. I guess we must have inadvertently designed the architecture on rivet city.

Due to the fact we were so close to the river, the cavern we blew open to be the main chamber of our new city was filled with water. So we were forced to actually use all of the ordinance we got from the NCR to open the cavern directly to river so the water levels balance and we could get something done. Even then, Steven, Harkness, and I had to go underwater so we could open up a cavern below us so we could drain some more of the water. Harkness was the one who got stuck down there resealing the cavern after we drained enough water, because we still needed a good deal of water so we could use boat transport for trade to Point Lookout and The Commonwealth and so we could purify water for the folks around here. It was the perfect place for the new city, because so few people knew all the exits, and even fewer people knew it was interconnected with vault 106 and 101. So, if the Enclave ever tried to storm the facility, the only way they could attack is by sea with the Vertibirds and that would be doomed to fail because of the Tesla Turrets me and Steven built once we got the frame work done. These were a couple of Mark VIII turrets we had salvaged from a base out to the southeast of the Capital Wasteland. We used pieces of a Tesla Coil to charge the laser of the turrets to deal enough electrical damage to take out a vertibird with one hit.

But, we seriously wanted to keep the Enclave away from the facility in general, simply because we'd be outnumbered drastically. They could keep bringing ordinance in from the oil rig in a nonstop onslaught. It would have destroyed the city and we would be forced into the open again and from there things would be over. Everyone in the city would either be dead or on the run and at that point they would be doomed to be in a grave.

The young knight escorted us to Elder Lyons. Arguably the oldest man in the capital wasteland, Elder Lyons' age has been lost with time, and the fact he could still lead or even breathe is inspiring. He was the model of health for his age and still the one of the best marksmen the capital wastes had ever seen. Elder Lyons' main office overlooks the entire city and leads back into the overseer's office in vault 101. We walked up to him and I started the conversation after a few silent minutes.

"Colin is dead Lyons. Augustus killed him."

"Why didn't you intervene? What were you thinking?"

"He used the switch to the emergency hatch into the tunnel system from the saloon, I tried to jump for him but I didn't reach him in time."

"Well_"

The intercom attached to Lyons' desk was going nuts all of a sudden. It was Casdin.

"Activate the emergency blast shields! The Enclave are about to carpet bomb Megaton!" He was panicking "I have already evacuated the above ground but dammit they have some big explosives, guys. It looks like 15 vertibirds headed Southeast towards the city! They're big enough to the point where one could level the city, if we don't think fast, the citadel doesn't stand a chance."

Jack spoke first, "Where can I buy a Sniper Rifle fast?"

Elder Lyons spoke to him as if he knew what he was planning all too well, "Jack, your money is no good here, Steven's son doesn't pay for equipment here. Knight Elliot, retrieve my Dragunov and armor for this man."

"Yes sir!" The Knight pressed a button on one of the computers and a shelf rose out of the floor, holding Elder Lyons' Dragunov. In Truth, it was far more intimidating than I had expected. The thing was camouflaged in a well made desert print and had a gillie suit to accompany it with similar colors. But from what I could see of it, I saw it had a silencer and extended magazines, very useful with one shot sniping. Judging by the look of anger on his face, Jack had been waiting to send this kind of message to the Enclave for a long time. He grabbed the Dragunov but declined the armor, and pulled out an armor I hadn't seen since we reunited the Brotherhood of Steel in New Vegas.

I remember that armor incredibly well in fact; when Lyons, Steven, and I had flown in to negotiate a rejoining of the two split factions of the brotherhood, it was in NCR territory, so the NCR had anywhere from 20-30 snipers covering each vertibird as they landed on the Dam. I remember I couldn't see but a few of them so I took out a clip and tossed it into the air to gauge their accuracy and how many there were. When the clip fell there was a sphere cut out of it. They had all hit it dead on and in such synch that they formed a perfect sphere out of the holes, whereas most would be cylindrical. I was stunned and Steven and I holstered our weapons for obvious reasons.

How Jack had gotten his hands on a Desert Ranger's armor, I'll probably never know. It was one of the most intimidating armors I had ever seen, it was so sleek, yet so strong and resilient. The second I saw that helmet go over his head and its optics glow red, I knew that things were going to be ended, very quickly. But something struck me as out of place; the helmet was missing one of its optical lenses, instead it had simply had a jagged crater missing where it should be, which was very strange especially considering how much damage those armors could take. Hell I heard tell that a long time ago, one of those helmets took a mini nuke right to the face, and the man wearing it picked himself up, cracked his knuckles and bludgeoned the raider to death with his own two fists even though he hadn't suffered a scratch. He gave the elder his thanks and leaped into the cove and swam out to the river from there he appeared to have swam from the citadel to avoid suspicion. He pulled out the Dragunov and radioed back to us as he shot the first vertibird's pilot over the river.

" You might want to close those blast shields that lead straight out to the river because most of these vertibirds are going to cause a good deal of splash damage when they crash."

"Ok Jack. We'll do things your way. Seal the doors Charon."

"Affirmative."

I activated a terminal and put the city on an emergency blast shield lock-down and we lost transmission with Jack. We could hear explosions outside, and I knew that Steven had no idea how much his son had learned before he met me. He didn't need my knowledge, my lay of the land, my weapon expertise. He had taught himself everything he ever needed to be a better version father in the wasteland before he stepped out of that prison yard. I might ask Lyons in a couple of years if he wants to send him out west to join the Desert Rangers, assuming if he isn't already one of them. I don't know who taught him, but I'd hate to meet them in a dark alley if I pissed them off. Judging by the fact he had taken down at least one of the vertibirds already, something told me he was going to be a valuable asset in taking back this wasteland from under Colonel Autumn's feet.

Casdin radioed to us from up above, "That kid is one hell of a shot. And he's a damn smart one too. Knows physics and explosives radius well enough to launch himself from a vertibird exploding. You train this kid Charon or was he born this good?"

"It's all in the blood Henry, its all in the blood."

**Chapter 7: Jack's Message**

The Dragunov felt good in my hands, like it had been crafted for me. The stock was adjusted properly with the armor, and grips fit nicely with my hands. The elder and I must have had a similar physique when he was my age. So far, 3 vertibirds were down, 2 had been smart enough to have landed, and 10 were still on course. I gripped the Dragunov tightly and shot at two opposite engines on two vertibirds and watched them run down the one in-between them. At that point I couldn't get a clear sight with the Dragunov and put it away and contacted Casdin.

"Casdin, Casdin? Can you here me? 8 vertibirds are down but 7 more are still headed your way. Over."

"Where are they right now?"

"That's what I need to know! It looks like they're over the Super-Duper Mart but they are out of range for the Dragunov."

"Flip the safety switch on the Dragunov. You'll be pleasantly surprised."

Sure enough, I flipped the safety switch, and these coils I hadn't noticed before started glowing blue. I took another shot with it, and I saw 4 vertibirds go down in one shot, the Dragunov had been modified with a Tesla Cannon's energy chamber. I smiled and ran to the landed vertibirds and shot them with a blast at close range. The blast flung me high into the air and for a split second, I felt weightless, and then I plummeted down to the vertibird below me shooting one adjacent to it down from above, and I landed the vertibird. I latched on to the side and pried the door open, throwing the pilot out the window and turned the vertibird around; crashing in straight into the other. I saw the vertibirds ignite and I jumped out of the cockpit and was pushed by the explosion right into the river. I looked around me and saw an enclave soldier desperately trying to scramble out of a destroyed vertibird that was sinking into the river. I swam over to him and helped him out of the vertibird and gave him a message to deliver to Colonel Autumn.

"Tell Autumn I'm coming for him. And I'll be the one to put him in his grave and any other troops that get in the way." I pulled out a few stimpaks for the gentleman and sent him on his way. I pulled out my radio and said, "All threats have been brought down, disengage the blast shields. Repeat. All hostiles have been grounded you are clear to disengage. We've sent our message. It's time for him send one back."

"Affirmative. Return to base. Nice work Jack."

I took off the aged helmet of my mentor and looked at the hole in it, remembering what he told me of the armor that he gave me.

_ 'Only wear this if you want to make a bold statement, kid. If you don't have a message to send with this armor, or at least a few bullets, the only wasteland asshole it'll get killed is you.'_


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Eight: Old Man in the Radio Station.**

I saw Jack walk up and I looked at him with respect. He was a well trained soldier, and I had under-estimated him completely upon our first meeting. I guess the fact that he was so upset over everything that had happened had clouded his talents out near Fairfax. He probably could have taken those raiders out with that Tommy Gun from the range we were at in the truck. We opened the blast doors back out to the river and we went to discuss the next move with Lyons. When we arrived, Paladin Gunny and Lyons gave a small round of applause for the savior of Megaton.

"Quite the display of fireworks from what I hear, child." Elder Lyons said warmly, welcoming the hero back into the control room.

"Damn right quite the display, kid! Half my paladins can't do that caliber of work!" Paladin Gunny said with a tone of happiness, a rarity for the man.

Jack replaced the Dragunov in it's rack and the shelf sank back into the floor. Suddenly, before any of us could say anything, the intercom speakers all over the city activated with a little feedback and a voice came over it, completely overjoyed.

"Boys and Girls, prepare to be astounded, bedazzled, and otherwise stupefied, after 13 years of being away from the mic, its THREEEE DOG, your master of ceremonies!"

The only words I could mutter out were "Holy shit, he's back on the air" and judging by the looks of the people who stopped in their tracks to listen to our faithful DJ they were just as speechless.

"That's right kids, those Enclave bastards may have put me away for 13 years, but you can never stop the music forever! But now, I am very pleased to present none other than our very own lone wanderer is here with us today. The man who we believed to be first a messiah, then a devil, but now we know him as a true mortal. Steven, welcome back on the air."

"Thanks Three Dog, it's nice to be back in the studio again, considering our last visit 13 years ago didn't go very well." Steven had somehow reclaimed control of GNR for Three Dog, well somehow isn't the best word; more like, he probably slaughtered the guards posted at that position.

"You're telling me, you stole my bandana and my glasses and threatened to put a bullet between my eyes. And I hear we have a newcomer to the family business in your bloodline from what I hear, and I also have him to thank for my 'Parole'. Fresh from Adam's air force base since he was 6, he's now 19 and hasn't been in the wasteland 2 days and has already saved megaton from a explosive fate, all while in the frantic search for his father. He sounds exactly like you after coming out of the vault, Steven. Any words for your son Jack?"

"It's true, son, if you can hear me, and I know you can, I love you and I'm sorry I couldn't tell you my plan before I left, but you would have ended up a casualty in the end. I couldn't die in there. The Enclave needs to be destroyed forever, and I couldn't do that from inside a cell. But word travels fast of your stunt with the vertibird carpet bombing, and I'm very impressed. Son, as impressed as I am, I want you to stay in hiding. The colonel still wants both of our heads on a silver platter, you as much as me now. I love you, and I'll come back for you in time, but there are things I need to handle first." I could see Jack's emotions darken as his dad said that over the radio, he was sad but he didn't stay that way for long.

"Steven, you are basically telling YOUR son what your dad told you twenty years ago and look how that turned out. You really expect him to NOT come after you?"

"Absolutely not. But I don't intend him to have an easy time doing it, I just hope that I don't get stuck somewhere for too long. Keep an eye on him, Charon, and make sure he doesn't feed the Yao Guai. That is all. Put on some tunes Three Dog." After the final part of Steven's speech, Jack had a monstrous grin on his face, ready to go on a journey to track down his old man. We noticed that the Galaxy News Radio signal had overridden Casdin's emergency signal. We frantically turned it on and listened to Casdin's screams of terror.

**Chapter 9: And War? War Never Changes**

"DAMMIT LYONS ARE YOU DEAF! ITS GONE." I could hear sorrow, fury, and absolute awe in his cracking voice. He had grown old much like myself.

"Henry, what in god's name are you talking about? What's gone?" I replied back, fearful for the answer.

"Purity. The Citadel. Arlington Library. We thought it was bad when Steven sent an orbital strike down on the citadel, there's NOTHING left now, all I saw was a massive explosion. The walls aren't even standing now, the Citadel is unrepairable at this point now. The underground city now has to function as the city itself, the purifier, and the Citadel. Everyone in that city is now a part of the brotherhood of steel, like it or not. We need to plan our next move Lyons."

I was awestruck, the sheer fact that the citadel in fact no longer existed was sickeningly incredible. I knew the Enclave had power beyond my imagination, but to absolutely obliterate the citadel, project purity, and Arlington Library in one bomb. It worries me that they know full and well this city lies beneath the earth.

"Understood Henry, go ahead in get in here so we can start planning our next move." I slammed my hand down on the desk in anger. Jack looked me dead in the eye and stabbed a knife into his old paper map of the wasteland pinpointing a location that had been overlooked for nearly 20 years now.

"Raven Rock. We take that, we can use it to overtake the base. There are abandoned transport tunnels we can take right from there to the heart of the base." He looked ready to kill.

I looked at him, depressed and said, "I hate to put it this way son, but we don't have the manpower, let alone the resources and cover to pilgrimage across the wasteland to assault a military base. Even if we did, who would lead it? Your father went off on his own and we aren't going to be able find him, Charon has been a follower his whole life, and you are far too inexperienced. No one other than your father stands a chance, and that's all he stands considering how well he knows the wasteland. Once you get there even, there is a solid lead blast shield that's 3 times stronger than a vault's that would have to be penetrated first. Do you have something up your sleeve that can help with all that...just hold on a moment." I clicked on the intercom, my hopes rising, "Henry? You still up there?"

"Yeah Lyons what do you need?"

"How much of a blast was there? Did it just penetrate the rebuilt bailey or did it look like it destroyed everything, the laboratory included?"

"Lyons, I know what your thinking, and I doubt you could get him out from under all that wreckage, if you could get in there, maybe you could power him up and he'd get out on his own, but you'd need to do it under the cover of night and have incredibly high hopes the power supplies weren't damaged in that last bombing run otherwise you don't stand a chance of warming him up."

Charon and Jack spoke at the same time, confused, "What the hell are you guys talking about?"

I spoke with a creeping grin on my face "Liberty Prime, boys. Liberty Prime. If we track down your father, this is the way to get into Raven Rock and get in quickly. Get your stuff packed, Gallows and you are headed to the citadel. Even until we find Steven, if we find him, Liberty Prime will be a valuable asset in dealing with the probably now nightly carpet bombings on megaton. I'll send the orders down to them immediately, feel free to wander the city and retrieve what you need."

Charon saluted me and said "Yes sir." he looked slightly worried about sending Gallows with him and Jack on this mission, ghoul or not I could read him like a pre-war book, and considering what happened between Steven and the Pride it's understandable.

**Chapter 10: The Ten Black Chips**

Jack looked at me and asked, "well where the hell are we supposed to be getting some durable tech from?"

I chuckled at him and stated, "For that we must go above this city into its former location: Megaton. Besides, judging by the explosion Moriarty set off last night, I need to go in there and clean up, and give Moriarty a proper funeral." I looked out over the city and wondered what it would be like simply to have been able to LIVE in this city, not just create and defend it. I walked over to an elevator, pressed the button and rose into one of the old shacks right next to Steven's house. We stepped out into the brisk morning air. We stepped lively into the warmth of Steven's original headquarters, his home, his armory, his barracks.

As I closed the door I turned around to find the place was riddled with Enclave bodies. Jack nearly vomited. They were the best of the best; the Enclave Sigma. Their armors were riddled with bullets, gashes, and scorch marks from where they had been hit with energy weapons; it had been an outright massacre, they didn't know what hit them. The location of them indicated an ambush but the leader was tied to Steven's desk chair in the center of the room, with a ripper run through his leg and a crater in his skull. There was a holotape next to him. I started the holotape, and got a taste of what 13 years in a iron cell does to a man who was halfway to insanity as it was.

_Today is the 13__th__ of November 2098, when I arrived at home to retrieve my equipment, I found myself in an ambush from the Enclave Sigma, the Colonel's Pride. Isn't that right Jacob?_

_ OH GOD SIR PLEASE DON'T KILL ME! -sobbing-_

_ SHUT UP! -thud-_

_ So, here I am, interrogating this miserable excuse for a soldier. You sure you aren't the Colonel's cannon fodder squadron?_

_ -sobbing- What do you want from me?_

_ -locker opening- but wait, you're the ones that ambushed me? -locker closing- so... I must ask, what DID you want from me? -ripper warming up-_

_ -sobbing- we didn't want...anything from you..._

_ LIES! -stabbing sound- __**WHAT DID YOU WANT FROM ME!**_

_ -screams- I SWEAR WE DIDN'T!_

_ -ripper revs higher- __**YOU'RE NOT MAKING IT OUT OF HERE REGARDLESS. MAKE IT EASIER ON YOURSELF.**_

I was so scared out of my mind simply hearing him interrogate this poor soul, I nearly crapped my pants. Jack was on the verge of tears. We continued listening, only for clues that could help us find him. Back before he went away he was having a hard time coping with his father's death, and that's what began this downward spiral into complete insanity, that and that idiot Tobar did some fucked up shit to his brain on his first trip out to the swamps.

_-louder screams- Oh God, if you exist, why have your forsaken me? PLEASE JUST MAKE THE PAIN STOP! AUTUMN SENT US HERE TO DELIVER A MESSAGE!_

_**WHAT...MESSAGE? **_

_He told us to tell that the 8__th__ black chip has been dealt with. All that remain are the 2 original black chips! Please don't kill me! -silence-wait...no...please I beg you! I told you everything you wanted to know...PLEASE GOD don't kill me!_

_ Have mercy upon his soul, my lord, and upon mine, for he is simply a misguided sheep that is to far from the pack to be found now. -Magnum Shot-_

after a long silence not unlike the one on the holotape, Jack spoke first, with a rather unexpected question. "What are the 10 black chips?"

"You ever play a game of poker with only 100 chips?"

"No?"

"Ok, well in a set of 100 chips there are 40 greens, 30 blues, 20 reds, and 10 blacks. Blacks represented the highest value. Back around 3 years before you were born, your father and I worked for the brotherhood as recon agents, gathering what we could. Now, before your dad met me, he went through 7 other assistants, all of whom he fired because they simply didn't work well with him. He and I retrieved these 7 operatives from their scattered locations around the capital wasteland and began a scavenging and reconnaissance operation, but we were short one, we needed a long range sniper, but we needed the best of the best.

We eventually traveled to New Vegas in hopes of recruiting a Veteran NCR Ranger, but to no avail. One night, while were out exploring the Mojave, a pair of men approached us. One following behind, carrying a sniper rifle. Steven walked forward and inquire how much it would cost for us to take the sniper with us. This guy, called himself the courier, tells us about this guy. Boone's his name. Best sniper the NCR ever had, according to legend, his art puts the Veteran Rangers to shame in the rifle department. Steven asks him, 'how much?', man says 10000 caps, it was just a drop in the bucket for your father, he says Ok, and then sees Boone hand off a little toy looking gun to the Courier. Steven looks the Courier in the eye, says he'll double the price for the gun that Boone just handed him too.

The courier looks suspicious, like he's going to get robbed, and Boone even has his rifle armed. Steven holds out a monstrous cloth pouch with the 20,000 caps. He drops it on the ground and Boone walked away with us. The next day, he showed us what we had gotten by paying the extra 10 grand. We found ourselves about to be raided by Caesar's Legion troops, and he pulls out the gun, it doesn't look like a useful thing; and then it went off. He clicked the trigger and we were blinded by the light. When our eyes readjusted themselves, we found all the Legion troops dead, we had invested into a giant solar laser. However, Boone told us the drawback immediately, it could only be used once a day. But we were fine with that. It finished off our group. We were the most skilled in the entire brotherhood. But, we were simply a group who retrieved gear. We pried anything valuable off any beast, soldier, or raider. I had sent them out to different sectors of the wasteland based on their areas of expertise.

Once a year however, we all congregated in Rivet City with our thousands of pounds of gear and gave it to Steven, he then ferried it all back to Megaton, to here, and traded with your mother in order to make a massive profit, with which he paid all 9 of us. This went on for 5 years, and on the fifth year, we had a intelligence leak, the Enclave decided for one more push and ambushed Rivet City, and while we weren't prepared for it, we fended them off, and they stayed away for around 3 more years. After those 3 years, we all went to rivet city again to do trade, and again they attacked us, far more better prepared this time on both sides, the battle raged for over a week.

This time it was a lot bloodier, the first time we lost more gear than lives, the second time, we lost gear and men alike. The Solar laser that Boone had we had already exhausted for day dealing with super mutants that were trying to overwhelm the gates of the original Citadel. We went from the 10 black chips to the 3 black chips. Clover and Dog-meat were killed by the opening squadron that rushed us with heavy incinerators. Butch and RL-3 were cut down by some soldier toting around a Fat Man. Star Paladin Cross and Fawkes took awhile to take down, but the plasma fire eventually overpowered them.

At that point, it was the four distance guys dealing with an endless onslaught of them; your father, Boone, Jericho, and I. However, after we fought our way to the bridge tower roof, a soldier carrying a modified Tesla Cannon fired at us, hitting Jericho right in the face. He went unconscious and fell off the bridge tower and Steven almost went after him too. Jericho was his first assistant and he had a bit of personal ties to him. We suppressed fire long enough to escape, but we lost all the gear for that year other than what we could carry on our backs.

It's a really sad thing to know that Boone is dead. He was a good man. Damn fine soldier, but in all honesty I would have figured he had died years ago. We got separated out in the Pitt when a horde of Trogs ambushed us and we were never able to regroup, that day we lost a good man and a valuable piece of ordinance; the access to the Archimedes Solar Laser Mk II.

"I'm sorry Charon, but we need to get prepared for the mission." Jack said, slightly depressed from the story and still freaked out over the mass of bodies.

I retorted back while stepping around the bodies to the refrigerator and grabbed an ice cold bottle of whiskey, "Ha! You sound like me after your grandfather passed away! I was always objectively thinking for the longest time..."

"Tell me, are a lot of people in the wasteland named Jericho?"

"What kind of question is that? But no, the only one I ever met was Jericho."

"But what about that man I body slammed back in Moriarty's saloon before Moriarty went and blew it and him all to hell?" Jack said, stumped, and I couldn't understand for the life of me how I had overlooked that stunning anomaly.

"Maybe there are still 3 chips left...no...I saw Jericho fall directly on to the bridge extending out from the city to dry land, he fell like a rag doll and snapped his neck. But there was no question about it; that was Jericho, you don't fight alongside another man for a week and mistake him for someone else. We have encountered a new kind of mutant. A sentient mutant that can change it bodily form at will. Someone very powerful wants to intervene in this, and it isn't in the Enclave's normal tactics to make a new mutant to deal with. We have a new player in this chess game, with a ever-changing set of pieces. Come on, we're going to need the really good gear."

**Chapter 11: A talk with the Colonel**

I opened my mouth to speak to the other soldier, but before I could say a word, he snapped,

"Shut it cadet. We're here to stand guard, not chit-chat."

"Yes sir." I said obedient to my superior. Suddenly I saw a shimmer of light and then a throwing knife went through my Commander's skull. I didn't move from my place and I didn't shoot. After a minute a man appeared out of nowhere in my face, holding a gun at my stomach. It took a second but I could feel the size of the barrel, either a .44 or an old .357.

"Look cadet, we're going to take a walk, you're going to lead me to the Colonel and then let me in. No funny business or I'll splatter you on these walls so well the other soldiers will think that the hallway got a fresh coat of paint. Sound good?"

"Wh-wh-who are you?"

"And that's why you aren't going to die as long as there's no funny business. But all you need to know is that I'm the Lone Wanderer, and the only reason the other one is dead is because I had met him before in my travels. He wasn't a very good man."

"Yessir." I had him put on the armor of my former commander in order to avoid suspicion and I led him through the military complex. He was writing down notes in a burned up old book as we walked through. After what felt like an eternity walking, we reached the center piece of the base where the colonel stayed in-between trips out to the wasteland. I used the eye scanner to open the doors and led him up the stairs to the colonel's quarters. I opened the door to him staring out his window and said,

"Sir you have a visitor."

"I'm not expecting anyone, I'm not taking visitors today"

The man who had me hostage spoke before I did, "Too damn bad Augustus. I'm not a stuffed shirt that can be put until another day."

The colonel spun around with his 10mm pistol and fired, but hit me instead of him. I collapsed on the ground and the wanderer shot the pistol out of his hand and it landed in his hand.

"I'm not here to kill you Colonel, even if you deserve it more than anyone else in the Wastes."

"I'm not prepared to negotiate with anti-American terrorists like yourself."

"Too damn bad. Now..._**SIT DOWN!" **_The colonel no matter how strange it may be, showed fear and sat down. The wanderer walked over to me, and said,

"I'm not going to kill you, but I can't have you going anywhere." He made a cross along his chest and shot me in each of my limbs, crippling me so I was unable to move. He smashed the pilot light in the oven in the room and it started to fill with gas. He held out a lighter and told Autumn if he didn't comply, we would all be smoking husks of ash. He nodded rapidly.

"First question! Did you kill Moriarty?"

"No! I swear I didn't. Crazy bastard killed himself in an attempt to kill me and my troops!"

"LIES! Tell the truth or we all die where we are!"

"Ok Ok! I shot him in the lung and neck, he shot me 5 times after that."

"Ok then. Next question! Why did you send 15 men to tell me Boone was dead?"

"It was a operation that had more than one objective. They were ordered to try to kill you not just to deliver the message. We didn't even kill him! Scouts found him out in Point Lookout in the lighthouse. We tried to get him out for capture. He used the Archimedes Mk II to destroy him, the lighthouse, and the ray gun all in one shot. All we found was his old S75 rifle with a note in the barrel saying, 'In your face you Enclave bastards, see you in hell, Boone.' I swear!"

The wanderer was almost at the brink of tears over this guy named Boone.

"Last question, how did you create that explosion that wiped those 3 landmarks off the face of the earth?"

The colonel looked confused and then smiled at him, "You're a moron, we didn't make that explosion...But we know who did. It was a thermonuclear bomb, hard to come by, but there are a few pre-war nuts who still know where a big site of them and other tech is."

"Where and who, Augustus?"

"I can't make your work too easy for you. I'll leave you with a riddle that should lead you on your journey for revenge quite well;

_I was but a small trinket in your early travels, though once a figure of legend. You scoured every hole to the ends of the wasteland to find me and my brethren. Return to where you found me; and you shall be awarded even better than you were before."_

_ "_Well then, I guess I have everything I need, see you in hell Augustus."

"Wait! You're not going to kill me?"

"I've personally seen you die 3 times now. It wouldn't do any good. You'd come back as you are, it would be a waste of munitions. But, if I ever find your secret, be assure you won't see another day after that."

"Seeya around Steven."

The wanderer started laughing maniacally in the doorway, stopped in his tracks by his laughing. He turned to face away from us, and said like a madman "I said I wouldn't kill you, I never said anything for your men...Godspeed." He snapped his fingers, and we heard a small ticking, and explosions went off all around the base, we looked towards the explosions and saw the windows crack, but not shatter. After a minute of fire down below, a single body flew towards window and smashed it; it was my commanding officer with the machete still stuck in his skull. He didn't need me to lead him here, he had already rigged the entire base to explode. We turned around and he was gone. The scariest thing was that he had kept his word.

A few days later, after we cleared the wreckage, I went to speak to the colonel to see how bad the casualties were of the attack. He was amazed, he had mastered the patrols so that all veterans would get killed, but none of the newer soldiers who hadn't seen combat yet would survive, most without a scratch. He had it planned flawlessly, he even had hacked our roster to adjust the patrols accordingly.

Colonel Autumn stated to me, "Anti-American or not, he's a smart son-of-a-bitch and a merciful one to those who lack bloody hands."

I returned to the infirmary to rest from my near crippling experience. My doctor walked over to me and said "I choose you for a reason cadet. You have potential, and you're a wastelander and not one of these pure freaks."

He took off his surgeon's mask and there he was, the Lone Wanderer. He was unarmed and now I see why he had known our patrols so well; he had been inside the base for weeks. I didn't scream or shoot, I instead felt like I was in the presence of a valuable ally. "Why me? Is that the reason you had me take you to Autumn?"

"Absolutely. You'll know your place when the time comes. If you let me down, you won't live to see 5 seconds afterwards I assure you, but I'll give you the option, you can walk away now and I will stop you. What do you say?"

"I've hated these bastards for a long time. When I was 10, they broke into my house and killed my family. They took me with them. Justice and peace my ass. I'm in."

"Ok then. Autumn is most likely going to assign you to his personal guard after what happened a few days ago. That means you'll be overseeing masses of troop movement. Keep them away from the megaton area. My life's work is in there and if I see an Enclave soldier within a mile of the place, I'll roast you over a fire and have you for dinner."

"You are aware that if I scream, twenty soldiers break down that door and turn you into Swiss cheese, right?" He glared at me for a minute unblinking, and then, I blinked and he had disappeared leaving a body of dust. I felt I a bone-saw against my neck.

He had a sharpened bone-saw pressed up against the opening between my helmet and armor. He had clearly dealt with more Enclave than I cared to know."Kid, you don't know half the shit I can do. Let's leave it at I'm not your average master assailant. I figured you would have realized that after I put that Machete through your commander's head. But I respect the balls you had to challenge my talents. The Enclave needs more guys with balls like you out in the field if they want to get taken seriously again, lord knows the sigma aren't worth the ammo they waste."

"You...you were the one who exterminated Enclave sigma?"

"Damn straight."


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 12: An Armory on the Basin and a Traitor in Our Midst.**

We arrived at an old Pulowski shelter, in the middle of a junkyard, and I looked at Charon like he was nuts.

"This is what we trekked 5 miles for? A measly little shelter?" I was appalled that I risked my life for something so small.

"Now hold on a minute, step forward from where your standing and you see what's really here."

I was skeptical, and then I took a step forward, and sure enough I felt like I stumbled into an alternate reality, the junkyard had transformed into a burned out military base as if it had been a location of massive importance before the war. I turned behind me to look out at the wasteland and I saw a iron gate covered in sheet metal, electrically charged with a pair of the same Mark VIII turrets that Charon had told me about in the citadel. These didn't look like they had been modified though, so he probably built variants for the citadel. We opened the shelter and it looked like a normal shelter, until I glanced down and saw a bunker door. Charon pulled out a key, opened the hatch, and tossed a frag grenade down below before we could move. I ran backwards momentarily. I thought he was nuts, but then I saw shrapnel and fire burst out of the shelter.

"I have to rearm this place to explode every time I come in. Unfortunately we need the ordinance down here to have an chance to deal with this new hurdle that's been dropped in front of us." He jumped down into the bunker, and I climbed down after him. I saw he hadn't been lying. This was high quality equipment just right here in the opening chamber. He walked up to an intercom next to a blast door. He pressed the button and a Protectron came over the speaker.

"Password sir?"

"Project Nightingale." He said slowly

"Welcome back officer Charon, good to see you back so soon." Charon's expression changed from the normal to a state of panic.

"I haven't been here in 6 months. Protectron, when was the last time I entered the facility?"

"20 minutes ago, you came in, grabbed something real quick and left 2 minutes later."

"Someone else is here, they tricked the defense system with my password. The bastard might have cleaned out the entire facility...wait... there is one way to check if this was by an insider, or just some idiot raider who hit the Jackpot." Charon told the robot to unlock all doors, he ran down to the Commanding Officers quarters, which would be my father's personal quarters, and turned on a light and it opened up a secret door to a safe. Charon opened the safe, to find it was empty. I looked out towards the door and saw a shadow outside the door, and it rolled a grenade into the door and ran. Charon looked over to the door and saw the grenade.

"GET DOWN!" He said, pulling me down as a fiery explosion engulfed the room and its contents in flames. He panted from the adrenaline, his voice hoarse, "Definitely a traitor from the inside." He got up and gave me a hand up, and we inspected the remainder of the facility, to find a massive amount of gear missing. Plasma rifles, Gatling lasers, power armor, and more importantly, schematics to most pre-war robots. "Who ever stole the gear was planning a coup against the citadel, and against elder Lyons. 90 suits of power armors and countless weapons and sidearms stolen. Damn. DAMN!" We went back out into the hallway to see something crouched in the initial chamber that the ladder was in. It looked humanoid, and jumped at us and transformed into a enclave soldier shooting a laser rifle as it tumbled behind us. Charon took his shotgun and shot it at the beast , and the helmet melted away to this demonic, animal-like face. And it let out a roar that knocked me down, and startled Charon. As the scream continued, its own armor collapsed from around it into a creature that looked like it was made of stone and tar. The armor that had collapsed around it the creature just reabsorbed into its body. I shot it with a plasma pistol I had grabbed, and then it turned into a pile of goo as most anything would but then, it reassembled itself just made of goo. At that point, Charon threw a grenade at it and it absorbed that too, and then he closed the door to the CO's quarters and we heard a monstrous explosion and could feel the heat from it through a blast door. We went back out into the hallway to find it layered thickly with plasma, as if the creature had acted as a large plasma grenade. We saw a body covered in plasma, we cleaned it off and saw the body of an old employer of Charon's, Ahzrukhal, fully fleshed and not missing a single limb, odd, considering according to Dad, Charon had blown his face in with a shotgun. Even Charon was freaked out, he took a few steps back, and then grabbed Dad's extra M1014 and pumped the thing full of shotgun shells. He emptied three FULL clips on the body, and then burned the remains as an extra precaution. As he waited for the body to burn completely I went into the security room and checked the security cameras and I found something rather unnerving, whoever this traitor was, he had a accurate rifle, you can't see him on the film but you can see the bullet heading directly at the camera. It had to have been an inside job. No one is that good of a sniper. I then found a camera he had missed, and I saw him walk through the gate, and I mean that in a literal sense, he walked _through_ the gate, open it from the inside and then let in the sniper who had dealt with the cameras, the feed went fuzzy after that and then, it got clear with someone's smile right in front of it. It had audio.

"Come and get me boys!" It sounded familiar and yet very distorted. A cold voice, but so comfy and familiar.

"Charon, you might want to get in here and listen to this..." I played the recorded footage for him and he got a look that you could feel the hate coming off. He walked to his old quarters and slammed his hand into the wall, breaking it, he dropped his double barrel shotgun. He retracted his arm, pulling out with it a rusty old combat shotgun that looked like it had seen more combat than he had. He then walked into the other 6 rooms, and did the same prying a total of 7 weapons out of the walls; 2 shotguns, 1 sniper rifle, an assault rifle, a switchblade, a Super Sledge and a laser rifle. After that he returned to each room, flipping a switch that was hidden behind each weapon. We walked back out into the hallway and saw a pair of cellar doors open up. He took me down into there, and apparently, it was where dad stored his one-of-a-kind gear.

"Pick your poison kid. Anything you want in here you can take. The stuff on the gray walls is good caliber, though it'll decay on you over a reasonable amount of time. The stuff on the green walls is stuff he salvaged from a spaceship, your ammo would be limited but I promise you'll need half the ammo. The stuff on the white wall is gear that your old man got his first night in the wastes, and we've never repaired it, it's held it's own against all forms of combat, uses common munitions, but not as much punch. Me and your father had a bet that if we blew Fort Constantine to the ground whether or not one of the assault rifles would have taken a scratch. Take your pick."

I gravitated towards the white wall, and what appeared to be a Gauss Rifle and a suit of combat armor.

"You're your dad's son, alright. Those when he was young were his favorite pieces of weaponry, he sacrificed the defense of the T-51b suit for it, claimed he looked like a bigger bad-ass wearing this. The Gauss Rifle was a truly a priceless weapon, best use for a Micro-fusion Cell without a doubt. Excellent potency, good way of saving ammo, since it only fires one shot, and that's generally all you needed. Plus, the piece has enough force to knock down a behemoth." I picked them up and we exited the cellar, cleaned up the mess, and rearmed the facility with explosives. In the initial chamber, someone had left us a note.

_To those who can't get by with my assistance without nearly blowing themselves to hell. You idiots use her in good health._

As I finished reading a gun dropped from above. I picked it up, it was a old .44 magnum, and then I saw the engraving on the hilt, which intrigued me. It was a man in a trench-coat and fedora. I handed it to Charon to see if he knew it's owner.

"The person who owns this is an enigma, the definition of the wasteland. A random chance guardian who has saved everyone's ass at least once. Even me, and he made a career out of keeping your father alive. For him to have relinquished his sidearm to keep us safe, odds are we are going to be fighting the devil himself here soon. Come on we have to get back to the citadel Lyons is probably in danger." We scaled the ladder and returned to the destroyed base. Once we were back above, we radioed back to the citadel.

"Lyons, you there?"

"Yes Charon. How was your search for Steven's more valuable wares then?"

"Eye-opening. A new kind of mutant is running amok in the wasteland; sentient, shape shifters, put the troops on red alert, and don't let anyone into your chambers. Nobody. Everyone in the city needs to report to their own quarters, EVERYONE. Check everyone. If I don't have my I.D. Shoot me on sight, because it's not me. Everyone in that city is under investigation Lyons, understand?"

"Why exactly am I not permitted to allow my sentinel into the chambers?"

"Dammit Lyons! They stole enough equipment to burn the place to the ground, there are 90 suits of power armor missing, not to mention over a hundred weapons missing! You can't let anyone in!"

"Alright Charon! But judging by your discovery, we need you to get to the citadel now, we can't wait until nightfall, take the stealth armor and get the robot running."

"I can do that. Charon out."

"Godspeed."

I looked at Charon, and asked him with fear for an answer, "So that's it? We just risk Lyons' life for some tin can ?"

He looked at me with a look of guilt and stated, "Me and Steven had some turrets installed in case the super mutant threat ever arose again. 20 mark VIII turrets that have been modified with Chinese equipment for a perpetual stealth field, and to be able to have a secondary weapon if we were overpowered to a high extent. We gave them the secondary weapon most bases would have dreamed of; 20 Experimental MIRVs, we made our own after we found the original in the National Guard Armory. Ashur thought we were insane when we showed up to his steel mill with 2 tons of scrap and a series of schematics. He demanded we install a pair at the gates to prevent someone like Steven from getting in again by force. But if things get bad, I can wipe out the any sector in a matter of seconds. Lord knows I don't want it to come to that, but I took an oath to keep that city safe, even at the cost of its inhabitants. The people wouldn't stand a chance, and neither would any mere mutant." Charon popped open a bottle of liquor and chugged it, probably to get his mind off the very real threat the citadel faced at this point.

"Well come on, they can't keep the place on lock down forever, let's get the robot up and running so we can clean up this wasteland." With our gear in hand, we walked forward unaware of the dark reality looming ahead of us.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 13: Just Business**

I sat in my chair overlooking the New Vegas strip from the lucky 38 and played my next chess-piece against House's queen. It was truly a beautiful sight to behold. After we suppressed the NCR and the Legion effectively in the surrounding area, we were able to expand the walls well beyond their limits in 2281. Personally I think House realizes it was a smart move to reopen the Lucky 38. We managed to build a whole new series of Casinos with the extra profit, effectively turning Freeside into a new part of the inner New Vegas strip. We destroyed the Powder Gangers and Fiends' headquarters and power within the area, and the rest fell into place. Of course, when the NCR and Legion shipped out, I left spies among their ranks in order to keep an eye out for the future. Sure enough, 16 years later, they came to be invaluable.

I saw a Securitron run up to me, similar to a human's way of walking. I knew instantly that it was Victor, the robot that had saved my life more times than one. He dug me out of my grave, and here he was; about to give me the most vital piece of information to the safety of Vegas, probably since Hoover Dam. "Uh partner, I think we have a big situation on our hands."

I chuckled at the over-dramatic robot. Then I realized, Victor is always in a cheery mood, not one of fear. I spoke to him fearful for the news, "What is the BIG situation?" I chuckled and kept cool, until he told us what was being plotted outside our borders.

"The NCR and Legion have put their differences behind them. They are both planning to reenter the Mojave and reclaim Vegas and the Hoover Dam. The Legion has become desperate for power and resources, and the NCR needs safe passage to the east to go on an Enclave goose hunt. From what our informants information are saying, seems they've reemerged out east, and it looks like they came out running. DC is completely under their control and they've begun to expand west. The legion, on the other hand, was moving east and didn't realize they were stepping into a firefight they couldn't win. Enclave decimated 2 or 3 entire tribes that belong to Caesar already. We need to prepare for a rather big war, because from the sounds of things from our informants, they're willing to burn everything in the Mojave Wasteland to the ground if that's what it takes."

House's screen came online, with the same face he always had, one of content. "Well then, while you both are used to conflict not being in my nature. Here's what I think; give them what they came for. I had a courier deliver a new piece of technology all the way from the commonwealth which will prove useful in keeping me alive after the dust settles. The Securitrons are more than capable of holding off the NCR and Legion by themselves, but however, together we can't beat them. We need to lure them into the a controlled environment where we can destroy compromise their chain of command. If the two enemies are working together, that means they're weak. Which means they'll be open to compromise. Or rather, staged compromise. We lure them in and we, and I mean you, 'deal with them'"

"You want me to kill Kimball AND Caesar? Then what? Are we supposed to have a dramatic last stand here in the casino? In case you are forgetting, you happen to be attached to the mainframe of the entire casino! This place goes down, you go down, all our plans for this city, gone."

"You think I'm that naive? I have been expecting for this day since the day we turned those black rangers and general Oliver into 5 piles of ash. The day you went out to the Dam, I sent a message to the commonwealth for a piece of equipment I needed for when this happened. It finally came in a few days ago."

"You mind telling me what this piece of gear is?"

"A body."

I was confused, even for what House normally has planned, I was outright stumped. "A...body? What did you need a corpse for? I could have gotten you one myself a lot quicker, you know."

"Not exactly a corpse. The commonwealth deals in technology. It is also the only place in the united states to have be able to build androids. Can you do the math from here?"

"You... you're going to be human again?"

"I have always been HUMAN, but for the past 2 centuries I have been unable to be like a human. With the android body from the commonwealth and my own medical capabilities, I will be able to make a never failing human body, instead of the shriveling prune I have now. I miscalculated how long my own body would last, by several hundred years. It will be so good to live again, but be aware, I'll be severely limited, I haven't used any mind power towards using a limb in 2 centuries. And as for our dramatic last stand, you won't have to kill them. I built a fail-safe inside the lucky 38 as...insurance if I was about to be destroyed. You always thought that when I contacted you, I was trusting you to make the proper decision, that I was RELYING on your free will. Not hardly. If you had gone with the NCR, Benny, or even Caesar and they ordered you to destroy me; you would not have survived the aftermath of such a grave decision. If the securitrons failed to kill you, the second Victor's AI went offline, the fail-safe would have initiated without a doubt killing you and eradicating the entire strip's population quite possibly."

"You mind telling me what this fail-proof fail-safe is?"

" I think it will be the first time you ever got to see this particular weapon go off, if that tells you anything. And if that fails, which it won't, who remain won't make it out of the gates. My...our army will see to that. But other than that...I think you would want it to be a surprise. And don't worry, there will not be any excess casualties, I have given the Omertas, the Chairmen, and the White Glove Society orders to turn any and all patrons away at the door and to evacuate the strip within 48 hours. Marjorie, Swank, and Cachino, were evacuated 20 minutes after the reports were received by Victor's AI. Even if the rest of them fail to survive, those who ran the joints will be safe from the aftermath. Lastly, the Securitrons are ordered to seal the gates and destroy the monorail, everyone thinks New Vegas is just being renovated, and after the battle for New Vegas, with any luck, both the NCR and Legion will be under our flag, and as such, finally concede this age old slugging match."

"What about then? How are we supposed to get out? What about the surrounding area? Freeside? The old Mormon fort? The Gun Runners? What about them Robert?"

"Hah. You really haven't been paying much attention to the securitrons activities lately, have you? The boys have been reinforcing the walls between the strip and the rest of the Mojave. They are now completely indestructible. Like I said, I knew this has been looming on the horizon for years, it was just a matter of when. And as for you and I, we shall be making our escape on a vertibird my securitrons salvaged from down south of Nipton."

I cringed at the use of the name of that town. To this day I remember walking through that town to find Benny, I was looking for assistance when I came upon a burned out town, corpses hung up on crosses and Caesar's legion troops stringing up more of them. At the center of town, a man wearing a wolf skin approached me, told me to go to the Mojave outpost and tell a trooper that the town was destroyed. I nodded absentmindedly as if someone had taken my soul from me and strung it up on one of those damn crosses. After that, I went to the outpost and drank every last drop of their liquor and my liquor too. Eventually, I made pals with this merchant, and trust me, she was a nice lady, right up until one of my business associates killed her with a laser rifle. That was my first dealing with a policy that my allies not only needed from me, but they demanded it. House calls it the just business policy. Hell, that would be the one thing he would say to Caesar and Kimball if he had to kill them. It's just business. He tried to break my emotional ties to my work, but never could. If anything I broke him. We spent 2 months going back and forth over whether the Brotherhood should be destroyed or not, and I finally won with the argument that power armored mechanics fighting alongside an army of robots was a good idea. Same thing with the Lucky 38, dealing with the Khans, and allowing the Van Graffs to set up shop in a new building a reopen the Silver Rush. Over time, the old man has learned to respect the way I get things done, while it often defy orders, it gets the more valuable results than simply blowing shit up.

"Well House, I guess you're going to be needing me to tie up some loose ends?"

He laughed at me and said, "You know me all too well...the NCR recently started sending black rangers disguised as citizens to the strip to note new defensive tactics and to make more than a few infiltration attempts. We at the moment have over twenty rangers in the basement who are unconscious. Since they are about to breach the Mojave any day now, the most tactical approach is to tear them apart at the seams. Kill and string up the rangers on crosses like the Legion, that will make them question Caesar's loyalty. Once they're on edge, send them both up to the penthouse. I'll threaten them that if Caesar goes downstairs and says he killed Kimball, the Legion can walk away with the Dam. He's a simple man and will turn on Kimball. The legion will slaughter the NCR troops, and then the securitrons clean up the rest of both sides."

I sighed and stated, "Not your best plan, you need to scare them into the strip. Make them think that if they don't move in there is something far worse waiting for them. Keep the rangers alive, but keep them on the crosses in pain. Hang up some dead fiends too. I will personally impersonate one if the rangers. Claim they were ambushed, they never stood a chance. After Caesar and Kimball ran, I took over the strip, killed you, and now the entire place is under my control. All areas have been abandoned for years. I abandoned the dam, and that I have just used the Strip as my own personal safe house and the securitrons as my own personal army for years. Claim I lost my mind, rigged the entire Mojave to go up in flames if they don't move to take the strip now and stop me. Once inside the strip have a surprise explosion at the monorail, and afterwards have the gate collapse behind them. Have the intercom on with me talking telling them to enter the Lucky 38 or die. You activate the fail-safe, we escape. They are corpses in the dust. "

"That's why you're second in command. Your ideas are very clever. But I need you to leave the penthouse for a few hours while I have the place decontaminated and prepared so I can finally be put back into a real human body."

"Why can't I be cleaned with the rest of the place?"

"You were born in the wasteland, as such, you are biologically unclean. I could soak you in every chemical ever made and it wouldn't change the fact. And if I am exposed to even one microbial of bacteria, I might have a year at most."

"Fine fine, I'll go and traverse the strip for a while. There's got to be something someone needs done before we fully close up shop." I walked out of the room and iron doors sealed the entry points into the room. I hopped onto the elevator and pressed the button for the casino floor. I had been worried that House was keeping something from me considering he closed us to the public awhile ago. I stood in the elevator for a minute and then it stalled. It opened at the presidential suite. I stepped out and went to my fridge when saw a shimmer of light. Over the years I mastered the ability to sense when there was a stealth boy user was in my presence. I pretended not to notice at first and continued rifling through my fridge, grabbing some psycho, slasher, and most of all; turbo in case things got out of hand. While in the fridge, I grabbed my favorite pair of spiked knuckles from behind a Nuka Cola. I walked out back to the elevator doors a banged on the switch a little. I saw the person sneaking closer, and I banged on it a few more times. I said "stupid damn elevator." I slipped on if the knuckles on backwards, and prepared to make a swing for the switch. At that precise second I spun around, did a sweeping kick and slammed my palm right into his chest. He flew back into the wall and I felt rather proud that after more than 15 years, I still knew how to preform the ranger take-down perfectly. I pulled out my weathered .357 Magnum and walked over to the unconscious assassin as his stealth boy, damaged, shorted out. I was slightly shocked as to who it was. My old assistant, Dr. Arcade Gannon was lying in my hallway having tried to assassinate me. He wore an armor I recognized well, considering I made it and he stole it when he left. It was a custom made NCR ranger adaptation. I used a few plates from the Legate's armor, pulled some T-45d shoulder pieces on it, and made a new overcoat from destroyed and defiled NCR and Legion's flags. But the thing Gannon left over was I had it modified into the power armor class with Enclave Remnants armor that I tricked him into giving me. I titled it the Centurion Ranger uniform. I remember giving away the original helmet and another ranger armor to the kid of the man who bought Boone off of me along with Euclid's C-finder. The look on his face was priceless; it was a combination of 'holy shit how did you find me?' 'I don't want to know how many people you murdered for that armor do I?' I spent 5 years on that base, knowing that kid would be something special. Gannon groaned in pain, disrupting my thoughts. I remembered what I was doing, grabbed a crowbar from my workbench and pried the elevator doors open. He was still reclaiming consciousness so I picked him up, stabbed him with a empty syringe, and dangled him over the endless shaft now that I had his full attention.

"You mind telling me what you're doing back in my casino you miserable, spineless, enclave twit!" I barked at him like I was still his boss.

He laughed and spat in my face, "Your preparations for the upcoming final stand are pointless, you know. You are outnumbered at least a 1000 to one."

"Are you forgetting who you used to work for? Well maybe you need a reminder..." I got my best leverage and I tossed him up the shaft, grabbing him before he plummeted to his imminent death. "Next time. You'll just fall, and it won't be pretty when I send the elevator to turn you into a pancake. Now tell me what you know."

He shocked me with an unexpected statement that I respect him for. "Go to hell. I'll gladly die to see you and that robotic master of yours burn with your city. Your 'preparations' for this attack are too little, too late. You don't have weeks, you maybe have hours! Whatever your boss has planned to get you out of here isn't going to work. Your bluffs will arrive too late. Don't you get it? They're fully ready to take you on. They have enough pulse weaponry to completely disable the entire network and strip. In fact, by now, you've probably already lost Hoover Dam and House's standard feeds he gets from there are probably still being perpetuated."

I looked at him smug, while in truth I was terrified. But I knew that was all the information I was going to get out of him. "Tell you what, I'll send the elevator down for you." I loosened my grip on him, but not enough for him to drop. And then he said

"So I'm about to go the way of the Legate...hah. I always imagined dying of old age, a commander in the enclave with children." With that, I tightened my grip again and pulled him inside. I disarmed him and ran into my room grabbing a dusty sack with something I found long ago. I tossed it at him and told him to get out of my casino. He looked shocked but left gratefully, afterwards I headed up to the penthouse, to find the iron doors wide open and the main computer in House's main room deactivated. Instead, I find a chair with a man sitting front of it, sipping whiskey as if it were preserved along with him. He bared a amazing likeness to his picture on the computer. He stood up when he saw me, and walked to me as if he hadn't been stuck in a shell for 200+ years.

"Kid you're looking at me like you just witnessed Jesus rise out of the grave as a blind man. It's just a cybernetic body. Apparently carved out of an android named A3-22. Took the guy twenty years to rebuild it, on account of A3-21, my expected body, grew a conscience and ran."

"Boss we need to get the troops armed NOW." was all I could blurt out to warn him of the impending attack.

"Has something come up? What happened?" A look of fear splashed across his face and it was almost alien to me.

"Gannon tried to assassinate me. Told me we might have hours and that's it. Not weeks. Not days. They already have the dam, they've just been continuing broadcast relays to delay your reaction time."

"Damn. Arm the troops. Oh and during the operation I was still able to access data. Couldn't use anything but, that guy Boone looked into. That guy is in some serious shit. There are names on that guys allies, that I used to know back when I was still able to breathe on my own. Once we get out of her and settle our own issues here, we need to head east and give your friends some support. One of those guys is more clinically insane than any of the fiends around here and has the power to back up that insanity. Damn nutcase basically birthed the FEV virus himself while in search for immortality. And clearly he found it." He walked to the window, silhouetted by the setting sun. Victor rolled up to him in his normal voice.

"Orders, pal?"

"Arm the securitrons and prepare the vertibird. Order all securitrons to move into the strip, and to guard the lucky 38. No prisoners, I don't care who it is. Caesar, Kimball, Oliver, I don't care if the damn Legate himself comes back from the grave. They are ordered to shoot anything approaching the strip. Safety protocols disengaged."


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 14: Getting Ready for Prime Time**

The kid said to me while moving rubble, "How are we going to explain to Lyons just how Gallows died?"

"He got shot by a sniper at 800 yards while trying to out-snipe him. What's so difficult about that?" I finally saw some hope scrambling down along the rubble. It looks like a hollow chamber, probably held up by the Girders around it. I slid down a piece of concrete and it all came back to me. We were standing in the main laboratory. I remember the fateful night that we reclaimed Project Purity. This giant tin can killed more than it's fair share of Enclave that evening. I remember when they called down a orbital strike salvo on him at a satellite. Steven wouldn't rest until every last person in there was dead and every scrap had been salvaged and put towards rebuilding him.

Jack tumbled down the rubble and said, "How are we going to explain that sniper was you?"

"It was an accident." Was all I said, even though I knew I had shot him where he stood on purpose. The fact was that the Lyon's pride and the 10 black chips were not on good terms even though we were simply different pieces of the same organization. They turned on us after the Citadel was bombed and Steven and I were forced to kill them or be violently killed ourselves. Gallows was one of them who survived and probably would have found a way to kill me had I not shot him first. But regardless we had found what we were looking for. I looked at the condition of the girders that surrounded the plate where Liberty Prime stood. The girders, while damaged, had dealt with the strain incredibly well. At Prime's feet was a terminal with wires running up the girders. I turned on the terminal and found it was a makeshift terminal that was used to access him and his main drivers. I tried to activate him via the terminal, but instead of the drivers being repaired, they had been destroyed in their entirety.

"Dammit! They wiped his main software, all he is now is a giant pile of scrap metal." At that moment, I saw beyond the robot to a doorway clear of rubble with a light on. I jumped up and ran for the doorway. I stood in the doorway, horrified at what I saw. The traitor had been a very busy person, brotherhood corpses, civilian bodies, super mutant blood samples, he or she was doing research into something. There was a holotape on the desk with a vial of something. I sat down in the chair and played the holotape.

_Voice #1: So you've collected the bodies I asked you to. Good, good._

_ Voice #2: So? When do we reintegrate them into the citadel's mainframe? I want to kill Lyons and the Wanderer soon. They've taken so much from me, I want them to pay._

I was shocked. It was Casdin. He had been playing his own angle all these years.

_Voice #1: Now hold on, that damn ghoul goes too or you won't live to watch Lyons die._

_ Voice #3: That damn kid dies too. He killed too many of my men with that damn riot in the prison sector._

It all started to fit together. That was the Colonel, and Casdin has been playing us for years. He is a Enclave spy. This last voice is a mystery to me, and what ghoul?

_Casdin: Jack and Charon will be arriving to reactivate Liberty Prime within the next few days, I imagine that they'll all be in the new citadel after they fail to reclaim Prime._

_ Colonel: Fine, I'll have the troops wreck Megaton if my guard doesn't have any problems with it. He has been sticking to a highly defensive tactic because he fears if we go in head first, that they'll have a fail-safe ready to destroy us. So far we haven't had any major casualties so he might be onto something._

_ Voice #1: Don't you get it Augustus? I can do as I please, I can change things with ease. Horns, hair, fin, or feathers you name it. I control the wind and weather. And the thing is? I'm just here to watch the world burn._

That was arguably the creepiest way to end the holotape. An unknown voice saying that he was here to watch the world burn as if it was not a nuclear wasteland already. I turned around back out to the main lab chamber, and I saw a man crouched by Prime's foot. He looked at me for a minute, stood up and I saw the crater in his helmet. It was Gallows' body. He walked up like a normal human, handed me two vials, and mumbled something,

"Gallows speak up man!"

"Project Nightingale: initiate protocol delta 2-1-5-3-6. Disengage frontal lobe device 356A. Welcome back, doctor."

I looked at him like he had lost his mind. Suddenly my muscles tensed, my mind flooded with images. I collapsed as the world faded to black and Gallows turned into another of those foul creatures. Luckily, Jack shot the critter in the head. And then, pitch black.

Memories flooded my mind. I remembered everything. I was a doctor for Poseidon and West-Tek corporations. We were tasked with discovering the key to immortality. In the process, we create the super mutants, the deathclaws, and the closest thing to a immortal human we could. They were these shape-shifting creatures that could form around a dead body and bring it back, also allowing it to change in form. It was more a military device than anything. Killed only by dismemberment or burning. But we finished it too late. The bombs dropped 3 days earlier. Our boss continued experimenting, tinkering with the DNA strand, determined to find something. We only knew him as the Director for years until someone blurted it out over the intercom. Director Robert Christian Lee. Eventually he ordered us inside the conference room and after we had assembled, he took a rusty scalpel and impaled himself in the arm and refused assistance. Seconds later, his blood started boiling and he cleaned off the wound and he had healed flawlessly. He killed everyone by turning them into his shape-shifting army after transforming them into ghouls. I ran after I was changed. He stopped me, he gave me the 'we can go up there and rule the world together' speech. We got into a struggle and I ran him into a gas canister that had his experimental mix of the two chemicals. We were both heavily exposed, him more than I. I got up above after sealing the door and went on a journey to the commonwealth for a piece of technology to wipe my mind. I finally found it. Sold myself to a band of slavers, and used it. I forgot, but apparently Lee has other plans for me.

I blinked myself awake with a old mister gutsy standing over me; it was sawbones. I was hooked up to a machine regulating my vitals. I got out of bed and walked out to the main lab. Jack was working hard at the terminal with a series of data discs scattered around him. I limped over and he said,

"I found back up copies of his key drivers. They were hidden in a safe on the other side of the complex."

"Can you get him working? And you might want to check for actual physical damages to the robot."

"Yes I can, and already done. Significant damage physically, but I jury-rigged the main power source around damaged areas, repaired what was necessary, gave his physical attacks and his laser systems increased performance. I couldn't salvage his bomb systems, but with the extended range on his lasers, it won't be missed." I looked up at him and saw where he had opened up Prime with a Thermal Lance and resealed him with the same instrument. I also noticed a good deal of debris had been removed out of the way.

"Either you haven't blinked since I was out, or I've been out cold for at least a week."

"You've only been out for an hour or so boss."

"How long until he's online? We need to get back to the elder so we can warn him about Casdin."

"I'm just setting up a firewall around his main drivers in order to make sure the systems can always be run. After that we can send him topside to cause some havoc."

"Smart move kid."

"And...Done. Can you flip that electrical switch over there so we can power this old boy up?"

"Absolutely boss." I walked over to the switch and flipped on the power, I turned around to see liberty prime rising into the bailey. I saw the gears rolling in the machine and thought that had they lived to see it, this would have made my superiors very proud. I saluted the old machine.

"Charon you alright man?"

I knew I couldn't hide it forever, I had to deal with the facts of my life. I told Jack everything. He was stunned at the revelations that came through this new knowledge. He was silent for a time and said, "Well, at least we know what we're up against. Thank you doctor. You have been invaluable to our cause." He was just trying to sort through it, like his father had when James was killed. So much, so fast.

**Chapter 15 Part 1: Double or Nothing**


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 15 Part 1: Double or Nothing**

House dismissed me from his quarters. Said he had something to think about. I went to my suite and prepared myself for combat and grabbed equipment we would need to make this casino a defend-able fortress. I first had to hook up the radio to the broadcast tower on the roof to contact our allies in the area for their parts of the defense. I tied the ham radio to my back, went to the cocktail lounge and took a crowbar and smashed one of the window panels. I threw a grappling hook over the roof and latched it to the broadcast tower. As I was about to climb out, my assistant, Veronica, hopped out of the elevator and asked me what was going on.

"I leave for two days to find another C-Finder and you lose your damn mind! What's going on boss?"

"No time to explain. NCR reentering with Legion support. I need you to get to Helios immediately. Power up Archimedes II, not I." She looked scared, but she nodded confidently and reentered the elevator. With that, I scaled the rope and I went to the broadcast tower, unlatching the hook in the process. After hooking up the radio, I aligned it with my emergency signal. My allies all knew that if this signal was on, the shit was about to hit the fan. Within minutes, the radio was bustling with activity.

"This is Elder McNamara. Who is transmitting?" The brotherhood were the first ones to respond.

"This is the Head of Oz. The bears are coming for a second hunt with the Romans. This hunt is of the entire Mojave, but more focused at dealing with the man behind the curtain. McNamara, I need you to arm your troops and when the NCR arrives at McCarran, ambush them. Also, send reinforcements to Helios One. Veronica will be arriving shortly. Rig explosives at McCarran if they have not already arrived. Make it easier for yourselves."

"Same one-track mind as always. See you after the dust settles I hope, Paladin."

"Same here." The brotherhood went offline right as Papa Khan turned on his radio in Red Rock Canyon.

"This is the man in the canyon. Whatever you want, spit it out Courier."

"I need you to hold off NCR reinforcements coming from both east and west. This is our final stand. And this time, the Mojave will walk away victorious, and Bitter Springs and Nipton will be avenged. I don't care how you do it, do you think you can?"

"Think, Can, and Try are three entirely different things. We think we can't, but we can. And even if we fall short, we will try until we're all gone. NCR reinforcements will not make it into the city. You have my word."

Soon after the khans deactivated the radio, old friends who have hidden away for decades spoke up. "This is Pete, artillery master for the Boomers, who is contacting us via this emergency signal, and how can I be of assistance?"

"Well I'll be damned, how did you make artillery master? Last time I remember you just a small little kid telling me a story."

"Well old man, things changed over the years. You haven't stopped by in what? Ten years? What do you need outsider?"

"I need you to give assistance to our forces facing off against legion and NCR at the Dam. Use the howitzers to hold off reinforcements. And if we've already lost the dam, I'll be frank, I want you to pile into that B-29 and bomb the hell out of them."

"You're asking us to do what we do best. And considering everything you did for us, we'd be honored."

Finally, Freeside's head king, the king, tuned into the signal.

"This is the king, how can we be of service?"

"Hey king. Listen we're about to have a_"

"Well, well, what do we have here? A trooper boy in my town? What are you here for?"

I heard something drop and then a tussle. Seconds later, I heard an explosion. Not from the radio, from outside. I looked out onto Freeside and watched fire spill out from The King's domain. House was right, the time for civility has passed. My fear turned into hate, now this is personal. The King was an old friend, a close one, dare I say. I turned off the radio and scaled back down through the window. From there I rigged up 3 makeshift turrets out of miniguns. I ran down to the casino and planted plenty of C-4 on the main casino floor. I busted out of the door, rigging explosives everywhere. I even hooked up the Omertas' old chlorine bomb. No one is going to walk out of here without more than their fair share of scars. I went to the main power box that all the power in New Vegas runs through and I opened it up, disengaging all power to the strip other than the Lucky 38 and the neon lights of the strip. It was a sight to behold the strip, completely abandoned. I heard a ruckus outside the gate.

"It's time I suppose."

A legionary appeared behind me, "Yes it is."

I grabbed his Machete, did the ranger take-down and ran his blade through his leg. I spoke to him, "Give the rest the message that if any of them want to walk away, they'll give me the man who killed The King." I left a C-4 block at his head to assure he wouldn't try anything. I ran inside the Lucky 38, and returned to the penthouse. The doors were once again open and House was still standing there, as if time had stopped. He didn't look at me, and made small chit chat.

"Heavy cloud cover tonight."

"Hey you got the time?"

"About 8 o'clock"

"Hey listen, I'm sorry about your friend. But regardless you were always one to go above the call of duty when you were motivated by outside events. Maybe we can give these assholes a fight to remember."

"They're outside our walls. Are you ready?"

"Been ready for years."

I turned around to Victor. His body had grown rusted over the years. Hell, he still had the scorch mark from where got caught by the weak end of a Mini-Nuke explosion. Regardless, that damn smiling cowboy never left his screen. Used to get on my nerves, nowadays it was just a refreshing change of pace.

"You need something pardner?"

I held out my hand and said, "Yes I do. I need to thank you for saving my life and everything else you've done for me over the years." Victor went from the slight bend in his back to standing straight up and he shook my hand with his robotic arm. I said to him, "I'm sorry that this is goodbye pal."

House beckoned me over, and he had his binoculars in his hand. He handed them to me and point to the gate.

"Looks like you left a good impression on the rangers kid." I looked through the old binoculars and saw something that shocked me. Chief Hanlon was yelling at Hsu for something.

"Man what I'd do for a pair of ears down there..."

"I could have you as an employee for the rest of your life with those words, but one hundred caps for our assistance in this fight will do." I spun around to find Gloria Van Graff behind me, with a hand-held radio.

"Where it being broadcast from?"

"Chief Hanlon himself. You made quite the impression on him or something. He asked me to deliver it to you."

I quickly handed her a sack of more than a hundred caps, and she turned on the radio. It drowned with static, but I could hear Hanlon's rage over it.

"_Dammit, you can't take this by force! You're already weak as it is,taking this will just weaken you further, if you CAN claim it. Just let the Mojave be as it is."_

_ "I invested over 20 years into the Mojave campaign. Hanlon, you are ordered to stand aside."_

_ "We are the desert rangers, we take orders from no mere man. Not anymore, consider the Unification treaty disbanded. We are done here, let's get moving boys." _

A few seconds passed in-between the argument and the next thing I heard from the radio._ "Hanlon to the courier, can you hear me?"_

I was speechless for a moment and then said, "Hanlon, this is the courier. How may I be of assistance?"

_"I don't need your assistance, but I would like you to know that you now have the desert rangers' full support."_

"Well, in that case I need you to help tie up some loose ends that I've been too busy to fine-tune. I need your troops to evacuate Freeside, assist the Khans in holding off reinforcements, and lastly, I need a good sized group to assist the brotherhood at McCarran, they tend to deal with problems head on, so we need some snipers out there."

_"Well I'll be, you must have a lot of informants in the NCR to be well prepared enough to just have me wrapping up small things like that. Anyway, the NCR should be detonating your front door open in 3...2...1." _

Sure enough, Hanlon was right. The second his radio went dead the entire Casino shook from the explosion. I looked down below to see a mass of NCR troops charging through the gate to an abandoned strip. I saw House emotion change from one of thought, to one of grimness and anger, like them barging through the door sparked something in him. He picked up his bottle of whiskey and stuffed a cloth on it beckoning victor over simultaneously.

"Victor, light this with your Gatling laser, will you?" Sure enough he did as he was told and it ignited. With that, he handed it to me. "We need to teach this assholes whose land they're treading on. This is the literal double or nothing. We win, we walk away possibly having claim the Legion and NCR under the symbol of the lucky 38; we lose, we die."

"Same as always." I threw the Molotov through the window and watched it land on some poor schmuck of a soldier. Seconds later the lights dimmed on the strip. They killed the power from Hoover Dam, and also apparently the substations we had running. After the light went out I used the Binoculars and saw legion scaling the walls. I ran over to the bookshelf where I kept my favorite weapon of mass destruction. At least the wasteland equivalent. My old Tesla-Beaton Prototype that I recovered, interestingly enough from the same crashed vertibird that House salvaged sat lying there. I picked it up and mounted it on my shoulder. I told Gloria to grab the the ammo box next to the doorway. It was filled with electron charge packs I had collected over the years. I always had the feeling I'd be holed up in the penthouse for a final stand against someone. I was about to use it to deal with a large clump of soldiers scaling an old metal fence. And then, the big chess pieces arrived in our streets. A vertibird landed in front of the casino, carrying Caesar and Kimball. Hsu ran up to them, and so did a face, I had not seen in many moons. The Legate was alive, and had scaled the fence when I wasn't looking. But at the moment I had something else to worry about.

"Gloria! Max Charge ECPs now!" She knew what I was talking about and changed the ammo type over to max charge so we might be able to deal with this quickly. After I was armed, I took a shot at the vertibird that was start it's engines back up. We weakened it defenses, but it was still starting to leave. We tried to fire again before the thing got of the ground, but the damn Tesla cannon jammed. And then out of nowhere, I hear a deafening rifle shot right next to me, and I look with my binoculars and see the pilot is missing a skull. I looked beside me, expecting it to be Gloria, but rather, the man behind the curtain had fired the first shot with my old Anti-materiel Rifle.

"Even back before the war, it was a good idea to know how to use a gun effectively around here." He said as the vertibird spun wildly out of control and crashed into the old ambassador's office of all places. "Had that happened when they were still in here, I would have been even happier." With that, they firing small explosives at us at us. House ran to his desk and slammed down a button and they stopped firing at us and instead started firing at the base of the casino. I looked down to see securitrons slaughtering the soldiers. With that, I decided to scare the troops a little. I ran down to the cocktail lounge and activated my turrets and grabbed the detonator to my fireworks. I pressed the detonator down and watched the monorail station explode in fiery display. The troopers down below backed up towards the Tops when I pressed the second trigger for the explosives rigged at the casino's door. But something happened, the explosives didn't explode, and rather a man stepped out. I couldn't see his face because I didn't have the Binoculars. He didn't fire at anyone, and no one fired at him. But then he lit a cigarette, dropped it on the ground, and then a radio signal came through.

It was silent for a minute and then all the man said was, "Ring-a-ding baby. Ring-a-ding." suddenly a bright red spark exploded on the ground where he had dropped the cigarette, and the man stood in front of the doors. The Tops casino exploded in its entirety, not just the small amount I had managed to rig up before they charged the gates. Fire poured around him but did minimal damage to him. House ran up behind me with Gloria and handed me the binoculars and when I looked, I was amazed to find who it was. It was Benny. I didn't understand how he had done it. I shot him, in the head, upwards of 15 years ago. Oh the irony. My entire world was upside down right now, probably like his was all those years ago. I sat down and double checked through the binoculars and he was gone just like that. I asked house if he had seen who it was as well.

"Kid, I don't know how he did it, but that was Benny alright. But how he did it is irrelevant at the moment. We need to worry about the mass of soldiers ready to kill us, instead of the one who is on our side."

Right at that moment, a small party of troops arrived in the room via an elevator with two old men that I knew well.

"Well well, this is an rather strange sight... Vulpes Inculta and Ambassador Dennis Crocker. How did you get past our little army?"

"They allowed us to pass because we're the negotiators."

House spoke to them in his usual tone, "Well then, allow me to put up the first roadblock, I refuse to negotiate with anyone other than Caesar and Kimball." He grabbed Gloria's plasma pistol and shot one of the troopers. "That's the only warning shot you'll get."

"We won't risk the lives of the mighty Caesar, or president Kimball for your silly amusement."

"Fine then. Do it." I followed orders and detonated the explosives in the Ultra-Luxe and Gomorrah simultaneously. The entire casino shook and knocked the troopers off their feet.

House's anger climbed, he grabbed Crocker's collar in his hands and held him up, with a mad glint in his eyes "Do you see now? I'm not about to deal with some measly underlings! Now bring me your superiors or I'll destroy the very ground beneath their feet! I've already done unrepairable damage to my own casinos. Imagine what hell I will wreak on you! This is MY city! You will not come in hear and make demands, especially when my troops are decimating yours!" The last time I saw him like this was when we first met. I was trying to get more money out of him for the platinum chip, on account of being shot in the head and all. When he offered me 1000 caps, I knew good and well that it was worth more and I told him I'd hold onto it. He nearly had his robots turn me into Swiss cheese. This has been the first time in over 15 years since he got legitimately angry. He threw Crocker at the others and told them to get out of his casino.

"Also, bring me the soldier that bombed Freeside. I want a word with him." The NCR in the group nodded fearfully and scrambled for the elevator. The Legion troops looked at us with a sarcastic smirk, and walked casually until I fired off my shotgun. After we saw them exit, we returned to the penthouse, taking the radio with us. When we got back, I activated the radio and tried to get a hold of Hanlon.

_"Alright, kid. Freeside has been evacuated and we saved as many of the kings as possible. My teams are holding off reinforcements on both sides and my best snipers have arrived at McCarran. I have my personal squadron left, where do you want us?" _

I thought for a moment and realized that we still had a large group of rangers in the basement. "Hanlon, I need you to break into vault 21 and take the subbasement routes into the Lucky 38 basement. At that point, I need you to wake up the captive rangers that we have and get topside and help us thin these numbers a bit. You don't have to kill NCR, even if your just sniping Legion troops off, everything helps. But I can understand if you don't want to kill NCR, them being your own men at one time."

House snatched the radio from me and spoke into it, "No actually I can't have you being here when the fail-safe happens, you are to get your soldiers from the basement and evacuate the strip and get outside the Freeside gates just to be safe. That goes for anyone else whose on our side listening on this frequency. Your orders are to keep your distance from Freeside and the strip, while the walls are indestructible, it's better to be safe than have any unnecessary damage done. Take it from someone who knows."

He handed me back the radio and I changed the broadcast frequency to the Helios One intercom transmitter. "Veronica, are you there?"

_"Yeah boss what do you need?"_

"I need you to get to the tower, and adjust the Archimedes II laser coordinates for 36º 10' 30" N and 115º 8' 11", got it?"

House grabbed my shoulder and said, "Why are you giving her the coordinates of the Lucky 38?"

"Because we are going to need power to activate your fail-safe aren't we?"

"Okay fair enough. Veronica, how long will take Archimedes to power up?"

"I'm assuming this House, but it will be ready in an hour and a half. Which means the laser will strike the casino at precisely 10:04 PM. That should produce the amount of electricity needed to power this fail-safe, and probably most of the strip for a brief moment. According to the current reading, it has 1.21 gigawatts of electricity stored up since it hasn't been used in a few years."

"Ok then, I guess we will see you after the fireworks."

"See you then boss."

The radio went offline and the elevator dinged. We turned around and saw only 3 men. President Kimball, the might Caesar, and a trooper who had bandages on his hands.

Caesar spoke first, "This? This is what handed us our asses at the dam? An old man and his subordinate!" his anger rose.

Kimball calmed him down, "Caesar if we don't cooperate both the NCR and Legion will be gone in a matter of years. Let's be nice, at least for now." Caesar grumbled and calmed down.

I spoke up, "Look, we are prepared to allocate 25% of the Dam's energy to the legion and 10 percent of the strip's funds. And for the NCR, we are prepared to offer securitrons as assistance in dealing with the Enclave out east. In exchange, you leave now, and leave me the man who killed the King. If you will not accept that offer we have nothing to talk about."

Kimball was furious with our offer and nearly pulled out the .357 in his pocket. Caesar grabbed the revolver, apparently satisfied by my offer.

"Have you lost your mind? If we take them out now, we can have all of both."

House spoke up, confident of his actions, "Look, we already have ambushed McCarran Airport, and your reinforcements are being held off by the Khans and the Boomers who have probably turned your men on the dam into artillery practice. If you kill me, the AI of the securitrons will hunt you down in my territory until every last one them falls, and even then, the independent factions of New Vegas will stay that way until we all are gone. So go ahead. Kill me. But the House always wins, and Vegas will always be free." He gave a big sarcastic grin after his speech.

I looked at him for few minutes and contemplated his original idea and said, "Ok then, since Kimball won't negotiate, we'll do this the way , Caesar, kill Kimball and the Dam is yours." It didn't take two seconds for Caesar to run his Machete through Kimball's torso and thrust upward. After that was done, I knocked Caesar unconscious and grabbed Kimball's body, complete with the machete, and chucked it out the window and let the carnage ensue. It didn't take 2 minutes for NCR to start taking shots at Legion. And then I remembered the soldier, I looked at the bandages, recently applied.

I strolled over to him, cracking my knuckles, "So...you're the one that killed the King? You don't look like you have the stomach to detonate and explosive right next to you." I grabbed Kimball's .357 and stuck the barrel up to his face. "Give me one reason why I should spare you. And keep in mind the King was a close friend, so think long and hard before you answer."

He didn't have anything to say at first, but then he muttered out, ready to die, "It's just business." With that, I snapped. I put down the revolver, smiled a big grin which quickly turned into a psychotic snarl. I lifted him off his feet, took him to the window, stepped out onto the ledge, looked at him for one moment and wrapped my hand around his skull.

"I'll show you just business." I lifted him over the ledge and crushed his skull in one quick move. Blood and gray matter showered on my clothes. I climbed back into the window. House was standing there with the radio.

"It's McNamara."

I snatched the radio, "Yeah, McNamara?"

_"We took McCarran Airport. Minimal casualties. How are things on that end?"_

"Good. We killed Kimball, Caesar is unconscious, and the Legion and NCR are trying to destroy one another."

_"And you needed us why? Excellent work Paladin."_

"Thanks for the status update, tell your troops to keep their distance from the strip and Freeside. I can't thank you enough for all you've done."

_"Well I'll keep you updated on anything going on out here. McNamara out."_

Suddenly I got another person on the radio frequency, _"This is Pete and the rest of the Boomers talking to you from inside a B-29 bomber plane! We are prepared for lift-off, all we need is your green light."_

"What's the condition of the Dam, Pete?"

_"The thing is crawling with NCR and Legion, they're dug in deep. This will be our last chance to decimate the troops unless you can live with the entire dam destroyed."_

"NO! We cannot have that! You are ordered to go! Good luck to you Pete!"

_"Thanks outsider, it means a lot."_

With that, I deactivated the radio and checked my old watch. 9:54, we had ten minutes.

"Kid, we need to get to hangar now! I need you to rig the engine in the vertibird for a little bit more power. If we want to escape the blast, we're going to need to be going 88 miles an hour, Vertibirds generally can only go up to 60." House said to me.

We ran to the hangar at the top of the casino as the two armies continued to fight one another. When we got to the hangar, I grabbed a thermic lance and opened up a pair of panels on each of the vertibird's engines. Using some Abraxo, I cleaned the sludge off the key gears and replaced a few broken gears with a few pieces of scrap, lastly I tethered a extremely long piece of cord to the vertibird from a connection to the casino so when the laser struck, it would give us a little boost. Within 2 minutes, the thing was ready to go. I hopped into the driver seat and tried to start the thing, but it stalled. I had to try two more times after that, and it finally started on the fourth try. I flew the vertibird as fast as I could, but all I could get in way of speed was around 75. And then it struck. Through all the cloud cover and darkness, this piercingly bright light struck the casino and gave us the boost we needed. We were right outside the strip gates when Gloria noticed we had unexpected company. I looked out and saw the mighty Caesar with a rusty machete, burnt slightly from the laser, pulling himself along the cord.

"House can you fly a vertibird?"

"Kinda."

"Good enough, I have to go deal with the mighty Caesar, take the controls." I leapt out of the seat and opened the cockpit door and looked at Caesar, and he yelled to me,

"Don't you see you fool! We could have built a new Rome and brought back the empire!"

I pulled out a old .44 Magnum I had received from a friend and only used on special occasions, loaded a shot, and aimed it at him. "If I miss, than you live, if I don't, well the result is obvious." I took the shot, and missed purposefully. Instead the bullet hit the cord and broke it. I saw him land in outer Freeside. Just as we crossed the outermost gate, House's fail-safe went off. The top of the lucky 38 was blown off but that was the only structural damage. Instead, it was just this sweeping wave of energy that swept through the strip and Freeside. It took me a minute to realize what that actually was; it was a hydrogen bomb. I didn't event know one even still existed. I was speechless for quite a few minutes and then all I could mutter out was, "That was some serious shit."

House said to me, "The same could be said for that lighting strike kid." And then, a very weak radio signal came through the damaged vertibird's radio.

"This is Pete, we have in conjugation with the Khans and Rangers, reclaimed Hoover Dam with minimal damage and casualties on our side, can't say the same for them."

"All right, we'll be there immediately. Nice work everybody. Vegas still stands."


	9. chapter 8 extended ending

**Chapter 15 Part 1: Double or Nothing -EXTENDED ENDING-**

House dismissed me from his quarters. Said he had something to think about. I went to my suite and prepared myself for combat and grabbed equipment we would need to make this casino a defend-able fortress. I first had to hook up the radio to the broadcast tower on the roof to contact our allies in the area for their parts of the defense. I tied the ham radio to my back, went to the cocktail lounge and took a crowbar and smashed one of the window panels. I threw a grappling hook over the roof and latched it to the broadcast tower. As I was about to climb out, my assistant, Veronica, hopped out of the elevator and asked me what was going on.

"I leave for two days to find another C-Finder and you lose your damn mind! What's going on boss?"

"No time to explain. NCR reentering with Legion support. I need you to get to Helios immediately. Power up Archimedes II, not I." She looked scared, but she nodded confidently and reentered the elevator. With that, I scaled the rope and I went to the broadcast tower, unlatching the hook in the process. After hooking up the radio, I aligned it with my emergency signal. My allies all knew that if this signal was on, the shit was about to hit the fan. Within minutes, the radio was bustling with activity.

"This is Elder McNamara. Who is transmitting?" The brotherhood were the first ones to respond.

"This is the Head of Oz. The bears are coming for a second hunt with the Romans. This hunt is of the entire Mojave, but more focused at dealing with the man behind the curtain. McNamara, I need you to arm your troops and when the NCR arrives at McCarran, ambush them. Also, send reinforcements to Helios One. Veronica will be arriving shortly. Rig explosives at McCarran if they have not already arrived. Make it easier for yourselves."

"Same one-track mind as always. See you after the dust settles I hope, Paladin."

"Same here." The brotherhood went offline right as Papa Khan turned on his radio in Red Rock Canyon.

"This is the man in the canyon. Whatever you want, spit it out Courier."

"I need you to hold off NCR reinforcements coming from both east and west. This is our final stand. And this time, the Mojave will walk away victorious, and Bitter Springs and Nipton will be avenged. I don't care how you do it, do you think you can?"

"Think, Can, and Try are three entirely different things. We think we can't, but we can. And even if we fall short, we will try until we're all gone. NCR reinforcements will not make it into the city. You have my word."

Soon after the khans deactivated the radio, old friends who have hidden away for decades spoke up. "This is Pete, artillery master for the Boomers, who is contacting us via this emergency signal, and how can I be of assistance?"

"Well I'll be damned, how did you make artillery master? Last time I remember you just a small little kid telling me a story."

"Well old man, things changed over the years. You haven't stopped by in what? Ten years? What do you need outsider?"

"I need you to give assistance to our forces facing off against legion and NCR at the Dam. Use the howitzers to hold off reinforcements. And if we've already lost the dam, I'll be frank, I want you to pile into that B-29 and bomb the hell out of them."

"You're asking us to do what we do best. And considering everything you did for us, we'd be honored."

Finally, Freeside's head king, the king, tuned into the signal.

"This is the king, how can we be of service?"

"Hey king. Listen we're about to have a_"

"Well, well, what do we have here? A trooper boy in my town? What are you here for?"

I heard something drop and then a tussle. Seconds later, I heard an explosion. Not from the radio, from outside. I looked out onto Freeside and watched fire spill out from The King's domain. House was right, the time for civility has passed. My fear turned into hate, now this is personal. The King was an old friend, a close one, dare I say. I turned off the radio and scaled back down through the window. From there I rigged up 3 makeshift turrets out of miniguns. I ran down to the casino and planted plenty of C-4 on the main casino floor. I busted out of the door, rigging explosives everywhere. I even hooked up the Omertas' old chlorine bomb. No one is going to walk out of here without more than their fair share of scars. I went to the main power box that all the power in New Vegas runs through and I opened it up, disengaging all power to the strip other than the Lucky 38 and the neon lights of the strip. It was a sight to behold the strip, completely abandoned. I heard a ruckus outside the gate.

"It's time I suppose."

A legionary appeared behind me, "Yes it is."

I grabbed his Machete, did the ranger take-down and ran his blade through his leg. I spoke to him, "Give the rest the message that if any of them want to walk away, they'll give me the man who killed The King." I left a C-4 block at his head to assure he wouldn't try anything. I ran inside the Lucky 38, and returned to the penthouse. The doors were once again open and House was still standing there, as if time had stopped. He didn't look at me, and made small chit chat.

"Heavy cloud cover tonight."

"Hey you got the time?"

"About 8 o'clock"

"Hey listen, I'm sorry about your friend. But regardless you were always one to go above the call of duty when you were motivated by outside events. Maybe we can give these assholes a fight to remember."

"They're outside our walls. Are you ready?"

"Been ready for years."

I turned around to Victor. His body had grown rusted over the years. Hell, he still had the scorch mark from where got caught by the weak end of a Mini-Nuke explosion. Regardless, that damn smiling cowboy never left his screen. Used to get on my nerves, nowadays it was just a refreshing change of pace.

"You need something pardner?"

I held out my hand and said, "Yes I do. I need to thank you for saving my life and everything else you've done for me over the years." Victor went from the slight bend in his back to standing straight up and he shook my hand with his robotic arm. I said to him, "I'm sorry that this is goodbye pal."

House beckoned me over, and he had his binoculars in his hand. He handed them to me and point to the gate.

"Looks like you left a good impression on the rangers kid." I looked through the old binoculars and saw something that shocked me. Chief Hanlon was yelling at Hsu for something.

"Man what I'd do for a pair of ears down there..."

"I could have you as an employee for the rest of your life with those words, but one hundred caps for our assistance in this fight will do." I spun around to find Gloria Van Graff behind me, with a hand-held radio.

"Where it being broadcast from?"

"Chief Hanlon himself. You made quite the impression on him or something. He asked me to deliver it to you."

I quickly handed her a sack of more than a hundred caps, and she turned on the radio. It drowned with static, but I could hear Hanlon's rage over it.

"_Dammit, you can't take this by force! You're already weak as it is,taking this will just weaken you further, if you CAN claim it. Just let the Mojave be as it is."_

_ "I invested over 20 years into the Mojave campaign. Hanlon, you are ordered to stand aside."_

_ "We are the desert rangers, we take orders from no mere man. Not anymore, consider the Unification treaty disbanded. We are done here, let's get moving boys." _

A few seconds passed in-between the argument and the next thing I heard from the radio._ "Hanlon to the courier, can you hear me?"_

I was speechless for a moment and then said, "Hanlon, this is the courier. How may I be of assistance?"

_"I don't need your assistance, but I would like you to know that you now have the desert rangers' full support."_

"Well, in that case I need you to help tie up some loose ends that I've been too busy to fine-tune. I need your troops to evacuate Freeside, assist the Khans in holding off reinforcements, and lastly, I need a good sized group to assist the brotherhood at McCarran, they tend to deal with problems head on, so we need some snipers out there."

_"Well I'll be, you must have a lot of informants in the NCR to be well prepared enough to just have me wrapping up small things like that. Anyway, the NCR should be detonating your front door open in 3...2...1." _

Sure enough, Hanlon was right. The second his radio went dead the entire Casino shook from the explosion. I looked down below to see a mass of NCR troops charging through the gate to an abandoned strip. I saw House emotion change from one of thought, to one of grimness and anger, like them barging through the door sparked something in him. He picked up his bottle of whiskey and stuffed a cloth on it beckoning victor over simultaneously.

"Victor, light this with your Gatling laser, will you?" Sure enough he did as he was told and it ignited. With that, he handed it to me. "We need to teach this assholes whose land they're treading on. This is the literal double or nothing. We win, we walk away possibly having claim the Legion and NCR under the symbol of the lucky 38; we lose, we die."

"Same as always." I threw the Molotov through the window and watched it land on some poor schmuck of a soldier. Seconds later the lights dimmed on the strip. They killed the power from Hoover Dam, and also apparently the substations we had running. After the light went out I used the Binoculars and saw legion scaling the walls. I ran over to the bookshelf where I kept my favorite weapon of mass destruction. At least the wasteland equivalent. My old Tesla-Beaton Prototype that I recovered, interestingly enough from the same crashed vertibird that House salvaged sat lying there. I picked it up and mounted it on my shoulder. I told Gloria to grab the the ammo box next to the doorway. It was filled with electron charge packs I had collected over the years. I always had the feeling I'd be holed up in the penthouse for a final stand against someone. I was about to use it to deal with a large clump of soldiers scaling an old metal fence. And then, the big chess pieces arrived in our streets. A vertibird landed in front of the casino, carrying Caesar and Kimball. Hsu ran up to them, and so did a face, I had not seen in many moons. The Legate was alive, and had scaled the fence when I wasn't looking. But at the moment I had something else to worry about.

"Gloria! Max Charge ECPs now!" She knew what I was talking about and changed the ammo type over to max charge so we might be able to deal with this quickly. After I was armed, I took a shot at the vertibird that was start it's engines back up. We weakened it defenses, but it was still starting to leave. We tried to fire again before the thing got of the ground, but the damn Tesla cannon jammed. And then out of nowhere, I hear a deafening rifle shot right next to me, and I look with my binoculars and see the pilot is missing a skull. I looked beside me, expecting it to be Gloria, but rather, the man behind the curtain had fired the first shot with my old Anti-materiel Rifle.

"Even back before the war, it was a good idea to know how to use a gun effectively around here." He said as the vertibird spun wildly out of control and crashed into the old ambassador's office of all places. "Had that happened when they were still in here, I would have been even happier." With that, they firing small explosives at us at us. House ran to his desk and slammed down a button and they stopped firing at us and instead started firing at the base of the casino. I looked down to see securitrons slaughtering the soldiers. With that, I decided to scare the troops a little. I ran down to the cocktail lounge and activated my turrets and grabbed the detonator to my fireworks. I pressed the detonator down and watched the monorail station explode in fiery display. The troopers down below backed up towards the Tops when I pressed the second trigger for the explosives rigged at the casino's door. But something happened, the explosives didn't explode, and rather a man stepped out. I couldn't see his face because I didn't have the Binoculars. He didn't fire at anyone, and no one fired at him. But then he lit a cigarette, dropped it on the ground, and then a radio signal came through.

It was silent for a minute and then all the man said was, "Ring-a-ding baby. Ring-a-ding." suddenly a bright red spark exploded on the ground where he had dropped the cigarette, and the man stood in front of the doors. The Tops casino exploded in its entirety, not just the small amount I had managed to rig up before they charged the gates. Fire poured around him but did minimal damage to him. House ran up behind me with Gloria and handed me the binoculars and when I looked, I was amazed to find who it was. It was Benny. I didn't understand how he had done it. I shot him, in the head, upwards of 15 years ago. Oh the irony. My entire world was upside down right now, probably like his was all those years ago. I sat down and double checked through the binoculars and he was gone just like that. I asked house if he had seen who it was as well.

"Kid, I don't know how he did it, but that was Benny alright. But how he did it is irrelevant at the moment. We need to worry about the mass of soldiers ready to kill us, instead of the one who is on our side."

Right at that moment, a small party of troops arrived in the room via an elevator with two old men that I knew well.

"Well well, this is an rather strange sight... Vulpes Inculta and Ambassador Dennis Crocker. How did you get past our little army?"

"They allowed us to pass because we're the negotiators."

House spoke to them in his usual tone, "Well then, allow me to put up the first roadblock, I refuse to negotiate with anyone other than Caesar and Kimball." He grabbed Gloria's plasma pistol and shot one of the troopers. "That's the only warning shot you'll get."

"We won't risk the lives of the mighty Caesar, or president Kimball for your silly amusement."

"Fine then. Do it." I followed orders and detonated the explosives in the Ultra-Luxe and Gomorrah simultaneously. The entire casino shook and knocked the troopers off their feet.

House's anger climbed, he grabbed Crocker's collar in his hands and held him up, with a mad glint in his eyes "Do you see now? I'm not about to deal with some measly underlings! Now bring me your superiors or I'll destroy the very ground beneath their feet! I've already done unrepairable damage to my own casinos. Imagine what hell I will wreak on you! This is MY city! You will not come in hear and make demands, especially when my troops are decimating yours!" The last time I saw him like this was when we first met. I was trying to get more money out of him for the platinum chip, on account of being shot in the head and all. When he offered me 1000 caps, I knew good and well that it was worth more and I told him I'd hold onto it. He nearly had his robots turn me into Swiss cheese. This has been the first time in over 15 years since he got legitimately angry. He threw Crocker at the others and told them to get out of his casino.

"Also, bring me the soldier that bombed Freeside. I want a word with him." The NCR in the group nodded fearfully and scrambled for the elevator. The Legion troops looked at us with a sarcastic smirk, and walked casually until I fired off my shotgun. After we saw them exit, we returned to the penthouse, taking the radio with us. When we got back, I activated the radio and tried to get a hold of Hanlon.

_"Alright, kid. Freeside has been evacuated and we saved as many of the kings as possible. My teams are holding off reinforcements on both sides and my best snipers have arrived at McCarran. I have my personal squadron left, where do you want us?" _

I thought for a moment and realized that we still had a large group of rangers in the basement. "Hanlon, I need you to break into vault 21 and take the subbasement routes into the Lucky 38 basement. At that point, I need you to wake up the captive rangers that we have and get topside and help us thin these numbers a bit. You don't have to kill NCR, even if your just sniping Legion troops off, everything helps. But I can understand if you don't want to kill NCR, them being your own men at one time."

House snatched the radio from me and spoke into it, "No actually I can't have you being here when the fail-safe happens, you are to get your soldiers from the basement and evacuate the strip and get outside the Freeside gates just to be safe. That goes for anyone else whose on our side listening on this frequency. Your orders are to keep your distance from Freeside and the strip, while the walls are indestructible, it's better to be safe than have any unnecessary damage done. Take it from someone who knows."

He handed me back the radio and I changed the broadcast frequency to the Helios One intercom transmitter. "Veronica, are you there?"

_"Yeah boss what do you need?"_

"I need you to get to the tower, and adjust the Archimedes II laser coordinates for 36º 10' 30" N and 115º 8' 11", got it?"

House grabbed my shoulder and said, "Why are you giving her the coordinates of the Lucky 38?"

"Because we are going to need power to activate your fail-safe aren't we?"

"Okay fair enough. Veronica, how long will take Archimedes to power up?"

"I'm assuming this House, but it will be ready in an hour and a half. Which means the laser will strike the casino at precisely 10:04 PM. That should produce the amount of electricity needed to power this fail-safe, and probably most of the strip for a brief moment. According to the current reading, it has 1.21 gigawatts of electricity stored up since it hasn't been used in a few years."

"Ok then, I guess we will see you after the fireworks."

"See you then boss."

The radio went offline and the elevator dinged. We turned around and saw only 3 men. President Kimball, the might Caesar, and a trooper who had bandages on his hands.

Caesar spoke first, "This? This is what handed us our asses at the dam? An old man and his subordinate!" his anger rose.

Kimball calmed him down, "Caesar if we don't cooperate both the NCR and Legion will be gone in a matter of years. Let's be nice, at least for now." Caesar grumbled and calmed down.

I spoke up, "Look, we are prepared to allocate 25% of the Dam's energy to the legion and 10 percent of the strip's funds. And for the NCR, we are prepared to offer securitrons as assistance in dealing with the Enclave out east. In exchange, you leave now, and leave me the man who killed the King. If you will not accept that offer we have nothing to talk about."

Kimball was furious with our offer and nearly pulled out the .357 in his pocket. Caesar grabbed the revolver, apparently satisfied by my offer.

"Have you lost your mind? If we take them out now, we can have all of both."

House spoke up, confident of his actions, "Look, we already have ambushed McCarran Airport, and your reinforcements are being held off by the Khans and the Boomers who have probably turned your men on the dam into artillery practice. If you kill me, the AI of the securitrons will hunt you down in my territory until every last one them falls, and even then, the independent factions of New Vegas will stay that way until we all are gone. So go ahead. Kill me. But the House always wins, and Vegas will always be free." He gave a big sarcastic grin after his speech.

I looked at him for few minutes and contemplated his original idea and said, "Ok then, since Kimball won't negotiate, we'll do this the way , Caesar, kill Kimball and the Dam is yours." It didn't take two seconds for Caesar to run his Machete through Kimball's torso and thrust upward. After that was done, I knocked Caesar unconscious and grabbed Kimball's body, complete with the machete, and chucked it out the window and let the carnage ensue. It didn't take 2 minutes for NCR to start taking shots at Legion. And then I remembered the soldier, I looked at the bandages, recently applied.

I strolled over to him, cracking my knuckles, "So...you're the one that killed the King? You don't look like you have the stomach to detonate and explosive right next to you." I grabbed Kimball's .357 and stuck the barrel up to his face. "Give me one reason why I should spare you. And keep in mind the King was a close friend, so think long and hard before you answer."

He didn't have anything to say at first, but then he muttered out, ready to die, "It's just business." With that, I snapped. I put down the revolver, smiled a big grin which quickly turned into a psychotic snarl. I lifted him off his feet, took him to the window, stepped out onto the ledge, looked at him for one moment and wrapped my hand around his skull.

"I'll show you just business." I lifted him over the ledge and crushed his skull in one quick move. Blood and gray matter showered on my clothes. I climbed back into the window. House was standing there with the radio.

"It's McNamara."

I snatched the radio, "Yeah, McNamara?"

_"We took McCarran Airport. Minimal casualties. How are things on that end?"_

"Good. We killed Kimball, Caesar is unconscious, and the Legion and NCR are trying to destroy one another."

_"And you needed us why? Excellent work Paladin."_

"Thanks for the status update, tell your troops to keep their distance from the strip and Freeside. I can't thank you enough for all you've done."

_"Well I'll keep you updated on anything going on out here. McNamara out."_

Suddenly I got another person on the radio frequency, _"This is Pete and the rest of the Boomers talking to you from inside a B-29 bomber plane! We are prepared for lift-off, all we need is your green light."_

"What's the condition of the Dam, Pete?"

_"The thing is crawling with NCR and Legion, they're dug in deep. This will be our last chance to decimate the troops unless you can live with the entire dam destroyed."_

"NO! We cannot have that! You are ordered to go! Good luck to you Pete!"

_"Thanks outsider, it means a lot."_

With that, I deactivated the radio and checked my old watch. 9:54, we had ten minutes.

"Kid, we need to get to hangar now! I need you to rig the engine in the vertibird for a little bit more power. If we want to escape the blast, we're going to need to be going 88 miles an hour, Vertibirds generally can only go up to 60." House said to me.

We ran to the hangar at the top of the casino as the two armies continued to fight one another. When we got to the hangar, I grabbed a thermic lance and opened up a pair of panels on each of the vertibird's engines. Using some Abraxo, I cleaned the sludge off the key gears and replaced a few broken gears with a few pieces of scrap, lastly I tethered a extremely long piece of cord to the vertibird from a connection to the casino so when the laser struck, it would give us a little boost. Within 2 minutes, the thing was ready to go. I hopped into the driver seat and tried to start the thing, but it stalled. I had to try two more times after that, and it finally started on the fourth try. I flew the vertibird as fast as I could, but all I could get in way of speed was around 75. And then it struck. Through all the cloud cover and darkness, this piercingly bright light struck the casino and gave us the boost we needed. We were right outside the strip gates when Gloria noticed we had unexpected company. I looked out and saw the mighty Caesar with a rusty machete, burnt slightly from the laser, pulling himself along the cord.

"House can you fly a vertibird?"

"Kinda."

"Good enough, I have to go deal with the mighty Caesar, take the controls." I leapt out of the seat and opened the cockpit door and looked at Caesar, and he yelled to me,

"Don't you see you fool! We could have built a new Rome and brought back the empire!"

I pulled out a old .44 Magnum I had received from a friend and only used on special occasions, loaded a shot, and aimed it at him. "If I miss, than you live, if I don't, well the result is obvious." I took the shot, and missed purposefully. Instead the bullet hit the cord and broke it. I saw him land in outer Freeside. Just as we crossed the outermost gate, House's fail-safe went off. The top of the lucky 38 was blown off but that was the only structural damage. Instead, it was just this sweeping wave of energy that swept through the strip and Freeside. It took me a minute to realize what that actually was; it was a hydrogen bomb. I didn't event know one even still existed. I was speechless for quite a few minutes and then all I could mutter out was, "That was some serious shit."

House said to me, "The same could be said for that lighting strike kid." And then, a very weak radio signal came through the damaged vertibird's radio.

"This is Pete, we have in conjugation with the Khans and Rangers, reclaimed Hoover Dam with minimal damage and casualties on our side, can't say the same for them."

"All right, we'll be there immediately. Nice work everybody. Through it all, Vegas is still standing. Can't say the same for the other two sides of the dispute, though."

And for a moment, all was right with the world, until I heard a clanking and latching sound. I gave House the controls and opened the cockpit door, only to be met with a 9mm bullet to my shoulder. It had a lot of power behind it, and I knew it was his pistol; only that damn gold plated pistol has that much stopping power. I looked and saw he had thrown a bunch of pulse grenades tied to a spear at the vertibird. I slammed the door shut and took the controls back from house right as the explosives went off. The electronics were fried, but the manual controls were still usable. I pulled up on the controls, trying to land it without killing us all. I managed to get it down softly most of the way, but at the last second, the tail spun around on me and we crashed. It all went black.

After a while, I became aware of my surroundings. I could feel the crisp midnight air on my face, and I could smell the smoke from the nearby vertibird. I blinked my eyes open and saw two figures overhead, a man and a securitron.

I recognized the securitron immediately after it spoke, "Gee Benny, what do you think we should do with them? I think we should take them to a doctor so he can tend their wounds!" It was that piece of crap securitron that got hit over the head with a pulse grenade and got me shot in the head, Yes Man.

I didn't need to hear his voice, I didn't even need Yes Man to blurt out who he was. You can always feel the presence of a man who tried to kill you. All I want to know was how he survived and when did I get to finish the job. The high-roller, the man in the daisy suit, the man with the eyes of a cold snake, anyway you put it, he was still Benny, and he was still going down. He looked down at me and smiled, "Well what do you know? Our old friend is finally awake."

He gave me a hand up and handed me a machete. It looked familiar to me, because it was my makeshift machete actually made out of a rotating blade, and that's when he pulled out his machete, one freshly stained with the blood of president Kimball. He had blown up the Tops, stolen Caesar's blade from Kimball's corpse, and crashed a vertibird. I underestimated his abilities. I noticed my arm wound had been healed. "How the hell did you survive a shot to the head, a hydrogen bomb, and god knows how many troops? You're one determined bastard."

"Now, now baby. That's neither here nor there, and besides I might ask you the same. But here we are, let's finish this here." That was it, I leaped at him with the machete, but he swiftly countered and had me back on the ground. Melee weapons were never my strong suit, and unfortunately for me, they were one of his. I looked beside me to see that House and Gloria were both unconscious. I suddenly remembered, while Benny was good with a blade, he could never block his legs to save his life according to what Swank told me. I hoped for the best, analyzing my surroundings. And suddenly, my plan was made irrelevant, a deathclaw appeared from nowhere and sliced the poor idiot into lunch meat. Odd thing was, the deathclaw should have been coming for us on the ground next. Instead, it just sat humbly after killing Benny.

"That's a good boy." I heard a woman say. She walked up in the darkness and petted the deathclaw like it was a dog.

"Consider us even for your deeds for The Thorn. The deathclaw eggs were hard earned, but as you can clearly see, were useful in the long run. Anyway, I hope the Dinner Bell has been useful in your travels." With that, I remembered who she was. The first week after I stumbled out of Doc Mitchell's office, I came across an underground arena. She hired me on as an independent mercenary. With the money I made from that woman, I got into Vegas and made a name for myself. Her name was Red Lucy. I was about to say something, but as always, I had gotten lost in my thoughts and she was gone. I picked myself back up and checked the Benny's dead body, found a note and a vial. I read the note. It was a list of objectives. It was written on a piece of paper with a Washington DC stamp at the top. The orders were to kill House and destroy the lucky 38 and then report to a 'Henry Casdin and Director Lee' when completed. It said to remember who brought you back to the land of the living. I waited until House woke up and showed him the note. House was unnerved by the note.

"Looks like Lee not only perfected the key to immortality, it looks like he adapted it to bring back the dead. After we regroup with everyone at the dam, we need to head east to deal with this son of a bitch or he's just going to send mercenary after mercenary after me. We hated each other before the war, and he always was a suit short of a full deck of cards."

He walked over to Benny's dead body and stuck the vial's contents in him via a syringe. Benny suddenly gasped for air and I nearly screamed. And then, his dismembered arm started forming threads to its original location on Benny's shoulder. In a matter of minutes the arm had pulled itself back to the body and the excess blood was boil on the wound and when we cleaned it, it had formed a seal. It was the ultimate medicine. I had never seen anything like it. It was the most sickening thing I had ever seen, and I had seen a lot of sick shit out here, but it was also amazing that this one chemical could repair limbs, heal wounds, and even bring back the dead.

Benny coughed, "Well so now you now the smoke and mirrors that brought me back. That doesn't mean I can leave without killing House. It was the same deal as when I shot you in the head, it has to be done."

I looked at my old enemy, and said to him, "What's stopping you from just leaving, and neither they nor I have to ever see you again. You can go west, start a new life."

"It's not that easy baby and you know it. They modify the chemicals to cause certain systems to fail organically if you disobey their orders."

I grabbed my .44 from my holster and crouched down and whispered in his ear, "I'm sorry it's not. This way I have to kill you, and waste the ammo on your miserable soul. I was hoping you could die on your own" I shot him in the head, and then the heart, and then I just fired the other four shots wildly. Afterwards, I took the machete he had given me, hung his body up on the side of the vertibird and started slashing angrily. After a few hours he was an unrecognizable pile of rotting meat. I climbed into the vertibird to see if we could salvage it. No such luck, so we just started walking to Hoover Dam after Gloria woke up, the bloody past behind us, and a bloodier future in front of us.


	10. Chapter 9

**Chapter 15 part 2: The Will of the Wasteland**

Jack sent me out above to the destroyed courtyard to clean out some rubble that was blocking the entry way for prime. Something told me to do it, simply because I know he just wanted me out for a few minutes. I tossed a few blocks of C-4 here and there and just sat up above for a minute. I thought about everything I reclaimed in way of memories when that damn creature said those faithful words. While the knowledge I had was invaluable, I still wish I had been allowed to remain oblivious. Before the war, I had a family, a wife and daughter. I had saved up for years to get them into a vault in the area. And then after the bombs dropped, Poseidon contacted us and told us we were to observe the vaults' progress in the immediate area. My family was in vault 87. They were some of the last to be exposed to FEV and turned into the first generation of east coast super mutants. Now I wondered if I killed my family, my baby girl, my loving wife casually in combat. Hell, my little girl could have been the behemoth Steven and I fought to the southwest of Jury Street Metro over a little teddy bear trophy in a cage we had been challenged to retrieve. I sighed loudly and scrambled back down under the floor and gave a walked over to Jack.

"Jack, explosives are ready when you are."

He seemed to have cooled down a bit, "Thanks Charon, should we get a radio confirmation from the elder before we warm up the robot?"

"Probably, and we need to inform him of Casdin as well."

"Already done. I contacted him of that matter almost minutes after I got you hooked up to a machine to watch your vitals. He has Casdin stationed at Stockholm's old post and has ordered him to stay put until ordered otherwise. Soldiers that see him away from his post are ordered to shoot on site and all I.D. Scanners are set to send silent alarms to the elder directly. Most importantly, your ace in the hole turrets, I hacked them using a frequency module you had on you. Using the same tech we have at the I.D. Scanners, they are ordered to turn him into mincemeat if they catch his pass-card on their chassis. Whatever he has planned he better not be planning on going into the base head on to do it."

"Nicely done." I ran over to the radio and adjusted the frequency. "Charon to Lyons, can you hear me?"

_"Your coming through loud and clear Charon. I'm assuming you want a green light for the iron giant."_

"Yes sir! Do we have a go?"

_"You have a green light, reports are coming in that vertibirds are beginning to build up at the ridge just north of Megaton. It appears they're building up for a shock and awe campaign. Activate Prime and enjoy the irony."_

"That I can do. Charon out." I ran back to Jack and told him the news. He smiled and handed me the detonator for the explosives. I slammed down the trigger and and felt rubble fly away from the bay opening and watched dust pour in from the freshly made gaps. As the dust settled a little bit Jack started the robot up and we heard sirens I haven't heard in a long time. They were vault sirens, similar to the ones going off when we were chased out from vault 101 after killing the overseer. I remember that night well, we had received a radio signal from the vault asking us to offer assistance and return to the vault. When we got inside, we found a few dead officers and no weapons. Rebellion had been ignited in Steven's escape to the wasteland in search of James. His best friend Amata was leading the rebellion, and her father was the overseer who refused them their freedom. She asked us to help her, she sent the message. We were obligated to help her, and at the time we were still the 10 black chips so we had the firepower to kill everyone against them, not JUST the overseer. She asked us to deal with him peacefully, but he was hostile to us first, so instead, we killed him. Upon return, she was livid. She scrounged up both sides of the vault and chased us out under heavier firepower than we expected. Steven took a magnum round to the arm, permanently crippling him. Jericho was nearly killed under 10mm fire, Paladin Cross's armor was nearly unrepairable; all because Steven had given us the order to fall back and under no circumstances kill anyone if we didn't have to. I guess his resolve weathered down over the years with that bullet in his arm though. Years later, using a helluva lot of gear scavenged from the Mojave, we opened that door and razed the placed to the ground. It was nicknamed by NCR troops the 'Bitter Springs of the East'. But the thing was, we didn't have a misdirection. Me, Boone, and Steven along with 20 Paladins marched in there with the full intent of killing every single resident in there; men, women, children if we had to. However, after we had picked the vault clean, he ordered us out. We went outside the door, and he closed himself in with just an old knife. We waited out in that antechamber for hours, maybe even a solid day. We heard the vault door opening after a long silence and when it opened he fell from being leaned against it like a rag doll covered in blood. We picked him up and saw it wasn't his blood. He didn't have the knife anymore, all he had was a book, and all he was saying was Biblical verses. Some of the Paladins suggested going in there and seeing what had happened, but I decided no. I didn't know everything of his past but, I did know he had a emotional attachment to group of cannibals living in Meresti metro station and he used to be a bit off his rocker when we first met. Him covered in blood might mean a lot of things that would question his leadership and sanity. We took him back to megaton, cleaned him up and he told us to wait for the flesh to burn itself out so there wouldn't be the stench when we started digging. He didn't say anything else for days other than bible verses. Me and a small recon group entered the vault a day or two later and we didn't even make it a quarter of the way in the vault, the place was splattered with blood and while we could not see any human remains, the stench engulfed us. It smelled of Brahmin crap covering week old bodies toasted by a flamer. My team who had power armor helmets on could smell it distinctly. When we ran back out we vomited in the antechamber we had been in when it happened, the smell was just THAT bad. We didn't even make it outside. A few weeks passed and with the Enclave breathing down our necks preparing to take megaton, we needed to get our new city up and running. According to informants, we had 1 week. Steven had recovered, and organized a team to go in to the vault to open up a large portion of the vault with explosives so we could begin work. I wasn't part of the original team simply because I didn't have the stomach for it. After being in there once with that terrible odor I had had my fill. Afterwards, everything went better than expected, the Enclave didn't make a move for many weeks. That in itself was a godsend, but the it really helped us carve all the amenities into the base; water, electricity, a solid defense system. After everything was done, I asked the soldiers who went with him in the initial rigging what was in the vault. They told me that he sent them around their thumbs to get to his elbow. They were not allowed to enter the overseer's office or the atrium at all. One slipped into a corridor adjacent to the atrium and it and the walls were soaked in red, found a old tooth, and told us it still smelled of corpses. All of a sudden I heard a faint yelling that snapped me out of my trip down memory lane, like a fisherman pulling in the line slowly bothering the fish; it was Jack yelling for me to jump onto the platform before it rose out of the lab ruins and trapped me down below. I leapt for the rising platform and missed by a hair. At this point I wasn't going to be able to leap on, so rather I began climbing one of the four iron girders that encased Prime and the rising platform. I climbed as fast as I could and scrambled on to the platform as it finished rising to the higher level. I took a breath for air and then I saw them. Enclave troops had surrounded the platform. The commander in his shiny Hellfire Armor and Heavy Incinerator, approached us and said,

"One move and you're firewood. Now you'll help us get the robot back online and you'll return to_ Did you hear that?" We heard it. It was a massive crunching and buckling sound. I had heard the sound once before; we were in the Pitt, and the building we were scavenging through began to cave in. I was in the basement and could hear the actual foundation begin to buckle under pressure. It was a trap set by someone and it separated us from Boone. The floor around us caved in, we had compromised the Citadel's architecture by accident. The floor split apart and swallowed up soldiers whole. A few seconds later, one of the walls collapsed due to no support.

We started up liberty prime, and when that iron leg lifted itself back up, the memories of that night hit me like a brick wall. Cold crisp winter air, gunfire roaring on both sides, dead bodies piling up every where you look, and here was this match made in heaven; a man, woman, and robot larger than most of the buildings around here, who simply wouldn't have any of it. Here were these three soldiers who would have marched off the end of the earth if it meant they were closer to Project Purity. The man for vengeance of his father, the woman for approval from her's, and the robot was there just to blow shit up and fight "communism". I struggled to keep up with them and when we made it to the purifier, I collapsed in the doorway leading to the purifier. Sarah and Steven gave me a few stimpaks and a little med-x to stave off the pain for awhile. Surprisingly, I enjoyed the view I had from the doorway as I got to see a vertibird or two get blown out of the sky, and I got to see the purifier start up. Now that was a beautiful sight. A paladin ran to me afterwards and dragged me to the rotunda. I saw my close friend lying unconscious in the rotunda from radiation sickness and Sarah lying of to the side. I quickly regained all my strength, got my ax, and struck the door. The window shattered like the stillness of water that had a grenade thrown in it, and I quickly pulled him to safety. I spent the next two weeks without sleep, without food, I simply got out of my house every morning went to Moriarty's and soaked my head in his still the whole day, every day. I was nearly in tears when they told me he had woken up.

Suddenly, I found myself being shot at by some raiders. I ducked for cover and we had the robot open fire, poor idiots didn't stand a chance. A few were firing good quality service rifles at the robot but even with good quality equipment they were doing squat. The robot turned to face them and then I guess the last thing they ever saw was a bright blue light. The robot started marching on it's way again after that and didn't stop until it was time to cross the river. A vertibird started taking potshots at the robot with it's own lasers from across the river. And then I heard it's infamous battle cry, and I am positive that it echoed throughout the wasteland that fateful morning.

**"DEMOCRACY IS TRUTH! COMMUNISM IS DEATH!"** And with that, his lasers turned white, and turned that heavily armored vertibird into a giant piece of scrap. I could see in Jack's eyes that between his modification working perfectly and that battle cry, he was ready to give them a fight worth putting down in the books. With virtually no other obstacles other than the occasion wild animal, we arrived outside the Enclave camp quickly.

We got the jump on them. We opened fire while we were still in Springvale, and their weaponry simply wasn't adapted for that long range combat. Once Liberty Prime continued marching forward, the bombarded us with everything they had; RPGs, Fat Mans, light machine guns, Gatling lasers, anything they had. Liberty Prime's white laser cut through them like butter though. When we finished we moved into the camp. All the tents were on fire or destroyed entirely, except one. We figured it was the radio tent, so we entered it hoping to stave off reinforcements. Instead I saw the scariest thing I could have seen in that tent. I saw his bleached vault suit, the color was drained from it in our struggle when I ran him into that canister of gases. I saw his old modified scythe glowing from it's plasma lined blade that had been used to suppress so many mutants. And then, I saw him, the man I worked under for years before the war. Here in this tent sat a 200 year old psychopath with the same pitch white hair he always had, having never aged a day, maybe even a minute.

"Well, well, this is quite a surprising turn of events. I never though I would get to see that huge piece of scrap run. Let alone run properly. So here we are again Charon, two hundred years after you flee my facility. How are the wife and child? Oh that's right... I almost forgot...the company we worked for turned them into SUPER MUTANTS!" He cackled like he had told an excellent joke. "And the best part? You helped make the virus that turned them into those abominations! HAHAHA! How's THAT for poetic justice." It was all I could do to not engage him in combat.

"Well if it isn't director Robert Lee...One of the sickest bastards to walk among the living, and unlike most of the living, you're determined not to die."

His chuckle smile turned into a snarl as if he really realized who he was really dealing with. He tightened his grip on that rusted scythe of his and I prepared for him to make a move. Instead he just stood up for a minute, and out of nowhere started slashing like a madman. His combat style hadn't changed; fast, sweeping, movements designed to snag you and toss you around. I knew how he would attack and I dodged accordingly, and countered with a swift kick to the back followed by a clockwise spin to dropkick him in the stomach. He was knocked back onto the floor. He grabbed his scythe and pressed a button on his staff and it turned into a stun baton, with a bright blue bolt of lightning encasing the entire thing.

I expected him to charge at me instead before he could, several cans dropped in from a hole in the tent. He picked one up and chuckled a little bit. I grabbed one of the cans myself, it was a flash-bang grenade. I tossed it away from myself and ducked for cover right as they exploded.

As my eyes began to readjust, I saw a figure fighting hand to hand with the Director. All I saw was a a blue figure and brown hair. My eyes finally fully adjusted and I saw Steven fighting back the director with his bare fists. I inched out from behind cover so I could see everything. I got out from behind cover right as Steven did a uppercut, cross, and then a solid punch right into Lee's ribs. He took the opportunity of knocking down Lee to knock him out and in a second he had him in the sleeper hold I had taught him when we younger.

Suddenly, Lee melted into a puddle and rematerialized outside his grip. He grabbed Steven by the throat and lifted him. What he failed to realize was that Steven was slipping on his ballistic fist in-between random staged flailing, and when he got it on he did something we know as the one inch punch and that was a sight to see. He hit him right in the stomach and sent him flying out of the tent. Steven ran over to me pumped a few stimpaks into my arm asked me,

"Why the hell didn't you ever tell me you knew this nutcase?"

"Because for 185 years, I didn't remember that I did. I was traumatized by what's down there, and I wiped my mind to forget everything. He reincarnated Gallows and got the device's disengage code. He's a sick son-of-a-bitch and he's a bigger threat than anything we ever faced."

"Don't worry, even if the ballistic fist to the chest didn't kill him, Prime will kill him. I saw that new white laser of his, very nice work."

"Then go over there and thank your son for what he did. He's a very bright child, and damn good with a weapon. I've been able to see this kid's talents, and there is absolutely nothing I could teach him. Whoever gave him that ranger combat armor trained him to the equivalent of a veteran ranger out west." He stood up for a minute and walked over to Jack. He leaned down to the poor boy, knocked unconscious by the grenades.

I heard him say to his son, "Congratulations son, you've officially over-shadowed the work of your old man. You brought back to life a symbol of everything we stand for around here, and you more than trashed the Enclave's intimidation value around here." I picked myself back up and then we heard a gigantic crash that shook the entire ridge. We looked at one another and ran outside. We saw the director had toppled Liberty Prime and was ripping into his machinery. We had to stop him but I didn't have any weaponry on hand other than my combat shotgun, the mysterious stranger's revolver, and the damn vial Gallows gave me. While the revolver and shotgun were effective weapons, they weren't going to be an smart tactical choice against him. I contemplated what could be in there for a minute and decided to risk it. I didn't know if it were poison or what, but I took a leap of faith in his insanity. He always did like a challenge and he wouldn't just kill me off. I jammed the vial's contents into my arm and things changed.

My muscles stiffened and my body turned into one of the demonic creatures we had encountered before, but rather, I remained in control. I thought about a weapon that would be useful against my opponent, and seconds later, my body had formed it. My blood ran cold and my skin turned black. I lost control of my functions, I could tell my body what to do and it would complete the overall task anyway it saw fit. It felt like I was a miniature version of myself inside this new body. I gave it the directive to kill Lee and I got a front seat show to the battle. And suddenly when he struck, I was thrust back into the driver seat. I materialized a longsword to counter his attacks with the scythe, and in seconds my body used the sword like I had been taught how to use one as a child. We fought like I imagine old people before the war used to fight. No guns, no explosions, just two men fighting it out with sharp objects.

I taunted him as we fought our timeless battle, "So Lee, how long has it been? Tell me, how important was I to your little plan?"

He scowled, "You were to be merely a pawn in the plan, and it's been two hundred years you slimy son-of-a-bitch!" the arm of the vault suit shredded to pieces as his arm turned into that of a deathclaw. He leapt at me, but I dodged out of the way. He appeared as if he had exhausted his power. I approached him slowly, and then I heard him chuckling and then a creature appeared behind me; one of his measly mutants armed with a combat knife. I looked at Lee who stood up triumphantly, gripped the knife at my throat and said to the mutant wielding it,

"Sorry about this doc." With that, a series of materialized metal spines coming out of my back like a porcupine tearing the creature to pieces. I regenerated my longsword and continued my duel with him. "So tell me, how did you escape? I cut the cables to the elevator and rigged it with explosives beforehand to cave in the shaft when it impacted. I even jumped down the shaft to make sure it was stable."

"The cybernetics lab had enough explosives to level the entire wasteland. I thought you would have remembered after what I did to the Pentagon, Arlington Library, and the Jefferson Memorial. You think I couldn't move a bit of debris out of my way?" I had gotten him to say the charged comment that Steven would race across a minefield, I knew he had done it once I got my memories back. I held Lee off for a minute and Steven ran up to him, leaping over my head with a nine-iron. He slammed it over Lee's head and said

"Laughter isn't the best medicine. Revenge is." He hit him again as he started to pick himself up and continued this for awhile until Lee grabbed the golf club with the deathclaw arm. He clenched his grip on the driver and broke it in half. He suddenly took an unexpected slash at my arm and the wound ran deep. Steven scrambled off, probably to call more reinforcements. My blood spilled all over Liberty Prime, the ground, everywhere. I fell to the ground and healed myself. I thought how much help a few extra soldiers would be to me at this moment, and suddenly I heard gears turning. Lee was deafened by his suspected victory but I could see it happening behind him; Liberty Prime was picking himself back up. The damages done to him were sealing up like my wound was; black threads like stitches pulled pieces of metal back together. This virus could do anything it needed to survive and would do anything it needed to. Lee changed his scythe into a spear and prepared to impale me when he saw the shadow, and even though he saw the shadow, he was too late. Liberty Prime slammed his fist down on the Director. He picked his fist back up and the Director picked himself up. He was stumbling around, all bloodied up. I think had I poked him he would have fallen over dead. But he just searched his pockets for something. He pulled out a syringe and stuck it in his thigh, took in a deep breath and said,

"This is merely the beginning of the hell I will wreak on this wasteland. What you have witnessed here is my strength at a quarter power. Next time, you won't be so lucky. Count your days, as one day, the Enclave, they will march over this country undefeated. And if I have to, I'll personally cut the throat of anyone who dares object. Consider this your first and final warning." With that he evaporated into the air, as if he never existed. Steven ran up to me and said

"Look, I just got in touch with Lyons, we've got a possibly serious problem. Nadine's burned boat just arrived at dock with a man navigating it. Guy claims to know us. The Enclave aren't going to make another move for now. We need to investigate the boat or we might regret it."

"What kind of damage could a boat do to the base?" I scoffed at the mere boat.

"It could do anything from poison the water, to release the strain of mutant virus that makes his little servants, hell the boat could be carrying a nuke for all we know! We need to check it out. Besides if it's Tobar running that boat, I want the pleasure of shoving a punga fruit down his throat."

"Ok I understand." Suddenly I felt my body relaxed, my skin returned to its normal color, and liberty prime returned to his normal metallic state, except the damage Lee had done and the damage Casdin had done to him in the lab had been repaired. The old robot looked as good as new. We accessed an emergency terminal on Prime's leg used to change directives in the field; changing his orders to hold Enclave reinforcements off from coming in. Afterwards we ran up to a higher point on the hills and entered through a old storm door built into the side of the ridge. I could tell that reopening this door prompted a lot of memories in Steven, but he had grown used to repressing things, even though he did it poorly.

He ran ahead to the console at the end of the stone chamber, and picked up a a detonator left on top of the console. He took a few steps back and clicked the detonator. The rubble all around it collapsed apart and he brushed off the big 101 on the door. He clenched his arm tightly as he pushed forward the lever to open the door. We heard the sirens, but now was not the time to bring up memories.

While we were waiting for the door to open up fully, Steven lit a cigarette, I said to him, "Damn. We haven't seen one another in a long time have we? I forgot you smoked."

"Bad habit Jericho had. It kinda stuck on me. I had given it up in prison, but the memories out here were just a little much, so I relapsed. It hasn't changed Charon, it's exactly how I left it. Other than Jack but he's basically just me when I was younger."

"Wait a second where's Jack?"

"Ran off when we were dealing with that maniac. Left a note saying he was heading into the city." Steven was annoyed by his son's rash decision, but he respected Jack for it. The door was finally fully open so we ran inside. We ran through the corridors as fast as we could, trying to get to Lyons before god knows what else did. And then, we were stopped by a shadowy wisp of a female. She blew us a kiss and then everything went purple and dark, big contrast from the bright gray of the vault. We looked around and saw our old friends sitting around and a younger version of ourselves sitting around the shadowy wisp. She slowly took form, and it was Amata. Steven looked to the point of tears and then lost it. He swiped the magnum from my holster and I saw him shoot our allies and Amata without remorse. They all disappeared, except her. She sat there and the bullet magically floated out of her heart and the other bullet out of his arm. The bullets formed a circle and then around that circle the vault collapsed around us we came to another image. We were at the purifier, and Steven's father, James, was inside the rotunda with Autumn. We watched James kill himself for the cause and Steven really started losing it, all the while the wisp still stood by us.

She whispered in his ear, _"This is isn't the Steven I know, the Steven I know was a soldier; he __would have ran in there, Fat Man armed and turned that fool into a pile of gore."_

He whispered back, "Like I did to you Amata?" And then it clicked what happened in that vault. We never found Amata and attacked, but he clearly did find her, and did more than just attack. We were thrust forward to when he sealed that door, I watched him scour the vault for her, and when he found her, my god. He wouldn't stop. He just kept stabbing and punching. He cut her up into tiny little pieces and ate some of them. It was just so sickening. And then, he took the corpses, piled them up in the atrium, and just chopped every single one up. One after the other, there was no way to convince him to do anything else.

I suddenly realized what was going on. The gases from Vault 106 had been released into the airways of the real vault and we were being dragged down a road of our memories. I remembered how we escaped when we were trapped the first time, and it was going to be just as painful as before. I took the shotgun and the wisp ran to me, screaming,

_"Why must you always insist on leaving?"_ I aimed the shotgun at Steven and fired. He disappeared as if he never was there, and now there was me. I aimed the gun at myself when I found myself back in the clean entrance hallway to the Bethesda Biological Research Facility. I looked at myself to find myself a normal human again. I hesitated on the trigger said a prayer and then spoke to the wisp.

"Goodbye my creation, but the real world is my home. All I have here are memories, I can't make anything for myself here." Suddenly the wisp took form of my wife and daughter, beckoning me to their side. I struggled to pull the trigger, and then he appeared in the hallway. He cut them down and I pulled the trigger. As I fell to the floor, I saw him walk up to my fading body, laughing and the last words I heard from him were,

**"You aren't even safe here, so don't even bother."** His cackling laugh thrust me back into the vault corridor.

I blinked my eyes open and saw Steven standing above me offering a hand up. We both prepared to continue walking down the corridor, and then we heard a terrifying loud animal-like scream. It came from the atrium. We ran and saw all the doors sealed, but we approached a window and suddenly one of the creatures leapt at the window. We looked further inside and saw there were 50 or more caged up in there. We accessed a nearby terminal and put the system on permanent lock-down. All the doors that were online to the network were now permanently locked, and just like that we had caged probably the biggest threat to the city or so we hoped. We got down into the lower levels, right on the border between the vault and the city and we encountered a darkened hallway covered with the same material the Director's mutants are composed of. I dropped a lead pipe to see if it reacted to noise and sure enough it reconstituted it standard form and charged us. Steven pulled out a small homemade flamer and torched the little critter. We finally made it into the city, bursting into Lyons' chambers. Lyons was glad to see me, but clearly annoyed that Steven was about to ignore him, leap over the guard rail, deal with the problem, and then disappear again under mysterious circumstances once again. Sure enough, he ignored him but rather ran down the stairwell. I quickly followed after him, apologizing to Lyons as I left the room. He just had that 'I've been through this so many times, just go.' look on his face. I had to leap over the stairwell to catch up to Steven before he went and did something rash. We ran up to the man on the boat and he walked out off the boat. He took off a bandana to show us his face and we were shocked at how much balls he had to come into our city after what he did to Steven. Here in our city stood Tobar the ferryman as if he had done the founder of it no harm. He wore his old outfit, that green coat, and that rusty key dangling around his neck; nothing had changed except these days he sported a double barrel shotgun instead of his old .44 magnum.

"Why hello gentlemen! It has been a very long time hasn't it?" He said every word with that immensely aggravating grin on his face. Steven leapt at him with a combat knife, but I held him back.

Steven was screaming at him, "Let me teach that sick little creep a lesson in etiquette! Come here Tobar, let me thank you for that little surgery! I've been waiting for you to come back!" He licked the damn blade madly.

Tobar chuckled at him, "I want the schematics for this place, in exchange the mutants aren't released and your city isn't nuked, AND you never see me again." Steven looked at him like he was joking. He smiled a real big smile, and said

"Ok Tobar, we'll do things your way. Let me go get them." He walked up to one of the turrets, opened a secret door on the base, and took out a briefcase. It had grown weathered over many years hidden away in something constantly exposed to the sea air. He tossed the briefcase at Tobar and then said angrily, "Now get out."

Tobar opened the case and took a quick glance at the schematics, and from what I saw, they looked like our original schematics. He sealed the briefcase and left without another word. I nearly went after him, but this time, Steven held me back and told me,

"Don't bother, all he just got were 50 schematics for the printing presses at Hubris comics building and plus, well just watch." I watched and right as Tobar's boat got out a good distance from the dock, a single shot rang out and the boat came to a stop. Seconds later, we were blinded by a bright light. After the blindness subsided, the boat was destroyed. I looked at Steven and he pointed to the stairwell, and there stood Boone with a new rifle made from the C-finder. Boone calmly walked down the stair as if nothing big had happened, and he told us how everything had fallen into place.

When the building in the Pitt caved in on us years ago, Boone was cut off from the rest of us via a slab of floor and when Boone tried to go around he spotted Casdin with a detonator. Of course, Casdin spotted him too and knocked him unconscious. He woke up with a couple of fiends carrying him west. Years passed and he finally made it back to the strip. There, Boone met up with an old contact for information on Casdin. Turns out, he had been a double agent for some time, all the way back to Adam's Air Force Base. Casdin rigged the missile terminal to fire the full salvo at the citadel no matter what Steven had chosen. Boone got a lift with some caravans back east. He made it back to base and went undercover. Casdin couldn't know he was on to his scheme, and the day finally came.

Jack swam back to dock with a Anti-Materiel Rifle on his back. Apparently, Jack was the first one to notice Boone and they put together Tobar's little goodbye present.

The two snipers took a bow and at that moment, a giant explosion shook the entire city and brought us all to our knees. We scaled the small rock ledge near the opening and saw what had happened. Megaton...was gone. Rubble was everywhere, pieces of metal the size of steel girders permanently embedded in the landscape. Steven tried to hold it in, but he couldn't. He collapsed to the ground, at a loss of emotions for his lost home. Jack stood in shock. Boone and I looked at one another for a minute, and he handed me a bottle of Absinthe and I handed him a Nuka-Cola Quantum, and we both opened them and downed them. We just stood there and basked in the rubble of the city of megaton.


	11. Chapter 10 PREVIEW

_ In their travels from the crashed vertibird and the site of Benny's gruesome execution, the courier and house will travel to Hoover Dam, but not with hitting a severe speed bump. An old enemy will escape from what was supposed to be his enteral resting place, and will bring some serious artillery to the game. This new artillery will bring to the eyes of the courier a highly secretive military group too skilled for even rangers to be a significant threat to them who wish to ally themselves with the courier. These men hold many of the wasteland's secrets, and come from all walks of life. _


	12. Chapter 10!

**Chapter 16: Those of Iron and Mutation**

House panted after me, exhausted as all hell, he hollered to me only a few steps ahead of him. His movement capabilities had atrophied slightly after all.

"Goddammit do we have to walk so fast?" I slowed down and took a deep breath. I had been fighting exhaustion for a few miles now. I had forgotten what it was like to walk the Mojave, to have to survive out in the wilderness. It was nice being back out in the desert though, the heat and the sand entering through my body like a age old friend. The mountains of the desert haven't changed, none of it had. I scaled the ridge ahead of me and sat at the top looking down at the one of the largest landmarks to survive the war; from the cinder-block walls that crept along the canyon's walls, to the water gushing out of the hydroelectric turbines. There she was, Hoover Dam. Securitrons, Rangers, and all other walks of life patrolled the great monument to humanity's need for power. In a single moment I had lost myself in the beauty of it. We were just one small ridge away from our destination point. Peace in the Mojave had been achieved, even at the cost of the hundreds of men inside the walls of New Vegas. It was ironic when you thought about it, people had predicted that New Vegas and the Lucky 38 would stand the test of time while the world decayed around it, and then the city of New Vegas sacrificed itself not for her own good, but for the good of her child, the Mojave.

I felt a light tapping on my shoulder and then the person behind me spoke,

"Welcome back to the desert commander." I turned around to see a Ranger behind me; I had forgotten how good they were at their jobs. The ranger took in a deep breath and took off the helmet, and I was amazed at who stood before me, it was that punk newbie from back at camp McCarran; Ten of Spades. I chuckled a little bit and looked at him and asked,

"You? Ha ha You? You became a veteran ranger out here 10? I tell you that's just a bombshell, I was almost positive you got killed at Hoover Dam years ago. But, no you proved me wrong in the strongest way, you survived and became a ranger. Not bad, 10 of spades."

He looked at me like I had told a joke, and said, "I'm not Ten of Spades anymore, I'm the Ace of spades. Got my eyes fixed in the hub by a doctor, real old man. Called himself Elijah. Used some prewar machine, just put a few little trinkets inside it and it gave him the equipment to do it. After that, my sniper skills just kept getting better and better."

My look of reminiscence and nostalgia quickly turned into one of fear and confusion. Elijah? After all these years? How did he survive, more importantly how did he escape? His last words to me were that he knew he wouldn't survive in the vault, and that he did what he had to, this world would have flourished again under his leadership. He regretted nothing and he was left with nothing. It couldn't be Elijah, must be an imposter. I took a quick glance at my Pip-Boy 3000 to see if I could pick up any radio signals, and I had two. I flicked on the first, and it was just normal local radio chatter, Mr. New Vegas reporting on the destruction of the New Vegas strip and how he was out a home and a fridge full of food. When I changed over to the other signal, I heard the Sierra Madre, and it's welcoming words. The memories of the hell I was trapped in for the 3 weeks that felt like 3 years. The pitch red skies, the collapsing buildings surrounding me, and worst of all, the feeling that at any moment, my head could explode on a whim of an insane old man. And then, something clicked. Ten of Spades was from Shady Sands, not the Hub.

I spun around to see his head hanging downwards. He spoke again in a robotic voice, "You are too late, Courier. Elijah has indeed escaped. The mysterious man from the east has indeed assisted in that. The man of the east has conquered and mastered the ghosts that haunt the Sierra Madre, both those living, and holographic. You've made a dangerous enemy this day."

Ten of spades turned to face me and his face began to fall apart on the ground in front of him. The drone walked forward to me, and then walked past me, and fell off the cliff. I looked down into the small valley and saw The form it had originally was gone, the machine now looked more like a robotic soldier, very archaic in design, but looked like it had some serious power. The robot's machinery began to expand, he started off at my size, and by the time he had stopped, he was the size OF the mountain.

I quickly equipped my rifle and started to shoot at the robot, albeit doing very little damage. The machine tried to grab me, it large hands slow but powerful. I took a time bomb I had made at the vertibird site, turned the timer on and right as it took another sweeping blow at me, I leapt onto it's hand, climbed the limb as fast as I could and tossed it into the machinery. The bomb's explosive yield knocked me off the arm and the arm off the robot. The arm made an enormous crash as it landed in the valley below.

The machine stood there for a minute, and suddenly, my pip boy system was frenzied. It wouldn't respond, I couldn't apply any medicine and it kept giving off this high pitch screech like a deathclaw screaming bloody murder. After a minute it stopped, and I looked up at the giant geared machine and saw the machine's heavy iron plate armor falling away from it. It revealed this immaculately cleaned steel, each part of the machine covered in data transmitters. I looked on with awe until it fired a large caliber missile at me, and I realized there were several dozen following close behind. House finally got up the ledge and was about to step out into a missile's fire when I barked at him,

"Stay down, House! Big robot, large missiles!" As I leapt out of a trio of missiles' firing paths. I saw House duck for cover and figured he'd be fine. Alas, I wasn't paying attention for two seconds and I got the tail end of one of the missiles. I was knocked to the ground in excruciating pain. I stuck a stimpak in my arm, and while it helped, I realized that only a miracle was going to save me this time. That's when he appeared. Right as a missile was about to collide with me, a man jumped in front of me and he took the missile directly like it was nothing. The man was a very tall, lean man, wearing a fancy suit like House, but wore a strange mask with a bird beak and circular eyes. He unscrewed the top of a cane he had and inside was a small longsword emitting electricity. He leapt up and struck all the incoming missiles, cutting each in half and then moving at amazing speeds to the next, and when he reached the giant robot, he disappeared for a second and then reappeared in front of the machine's one red eye. He impaled the eye with great force and the machine from there collapsed like it was made out of twigs. He reappeared over top of me and gave me a hand up. He said nothing at first, and instead just slid down the hill towards the damaged remains of the machine. I slid down after him to thank him.

"Um...excuse me sir! How can I ever repay you for saving my life just now? Please I must thank you!" I felt like a little kid standing next to a superhero in comparison to this guy, who took a large caliber missile right to the back for me.

He turned around and held up a large square piece of the robot, it was very complex and had several memory storage devices. He spoke in a deep voice, "If you want to help, you can help me scavenge all of these drivers from the golem, each of these is crucial to retrieve."

"Can I ask why you're only salvaging the drivers, I personally would salvage the missile systems on these things?"

"You think to use the technology against the people of the NCR and Legion because they are your enemies, whilst we seek to find a way to destroy these machines and their leader because they are ours. Personally you happen to be very lucky the golem didn't go stage 3 on you, otherwise it would have New Orleans or Central Park all over again."

"Wait, did you say 'we', as in there are more of you? And stage 3 what? New Orleans and Central Park, where is that and what happened? And what do you keep calling this damn machine? A golem?" He didn't answer, and instead cut open the main torso of the machine with his blade, pried it open, and pointed to it. I walked forward and saw what stage three would have been. There was 3 medium thermonuclear devices in his body surrounded by a elaborate circuit with small missile silos disconnecting the circuit in 7 different places. Had the missiles been fired the circuit would have been completed and would've wiped out the entire surrounding area, including the dam.

"So...how many of these machines are there? And why do you call them golems?"

"Before the war, a golem used to be a superstitious stone monster brought to life by a sacred word inscribed on their heads by sorcerers. We call them golems because they are pre-war machinery that is reactivated by a command word. If you speak that word to the machine, it is your servant, and will carry out your will until its demise. Before the war, the machines were going to be used as a undercover operation to wreck China by getting the golems in during stage one, and then have them go stage two and three once they reached the mainland. The machines were plentiful in numbers, but they vary in size significantly, as so far we've only encountered 3 golems. However, the mysterious man of the East who the machine told you of before he changed, has a massive complex probably filled with countless schematics and resources for constructing them. As for the organization I belong to, I am a group of extremely well trained soldiers from before the war, and some of us long before the war."

"So you belong to a ghoul only group of super soldiers?" The man's head tilted sideways and he laughed.

"Oh no my boy, we have for many different reasons, and very few among our ranks are ghouls surprisingly. For example, me, I am over 450 years old, but my body operates like a twenty year old, I was alive during the civil war my friend. My friend was a chemist, working every day to find a way to strengthen the confederate soldiers, and one day, he found it. A chemical combination that permitted cells regeneration rate to skyrocket to such a point that one could regrow limbs destroyed by cannon fire."

"Unfortunately, his small lab was in Richmond and was burned to the ground in the union siege. He probably was killed in the fire, but his formula and the math used to make it were preserved in a safe. I used his gift to keep myself alive until the time was right to reveal his research to the world. Alas, when that time came, I was too late to do any good. The U.S. Government scoffed at me and claimed I was insane for having been alive at that point over 250 years. Twenty three days later, the world was engulfed in flames."

"Hang on a second. You said the man you knew probably died?"

"I dug through the ruins of Richmond for 15 years looking for his remains, I never found them. I still search through the ruins of the world, looking for even for a trace of the professor."

"So how did you survive the war then?"

"Truth be told, I ain't got a damn idea. As the bombs were falling, I fled to the capitol building. One detonated right in front of the capitol building and screwed up my face right much. The city was on fire for weeks. Brought back memories of Richmond."

"So what did you do from there?"

"Easy, I continued on my dear friends quest. My friend had a dream to find and preserve all the world's culture from the dawn of humanity forward, so that the future would know its origins. So after around six months, I left the country to find survivors in other countries, hoping to preserve old world culture for the remains of society. As bad as things were here, they were worse elsewhere. I found few signs of life in Europe, other than the occasional band of raiders. I once saw a group of raiders trying to break into the ruins of the Vatican, and I gunned them down with a hunting rifle from my boat. Word of the slaughter reached a significant group of survivors in Venice, and upon traveling there, I was granted a gift for preserving the Vatican. They gave me a mask, and titled me the gondolier. I thanked them and asked them to carry on my mission to preserve the past. I returned twenty years later, found out they had reclaimed the Vatican and most of Italy. As I was entering the venetian port from the south, a man beckoned me to the docks. He was in his thirties, and wore drifter clothes similar to those I had worn on my first trip. I asked who he was, and he said he was a gondolite, one of the people to encounter me on my first trip. He told me he remembered the first time I landed on these shores, and how I had given them, a group of devout Catholics, hope. I was taken to the elder of the tribe, and he gave me a single gift, this cane in my hand, and told me that they could handle themselves from here. To this day, I still haven't gone back, simply because I trusted that elder. By the time I had returned home, other pre-war militants were emerging from the ashes. We banded together as the crap-shoots of society, and disappeared into the sand, only to reawaken when the past needed to be put back in it's place."

"So then, I take it when these golem things are all dealt with, you'll leave again into the desert."

"Not quite, the man of the east, Robert Lee, must be dealt with, a very unpleasant task."

"Why?" I looked puzzled at how one man could be such an obstacle for such a well trained army.

"Ummm, how do I put this, the son-of-a-bitch would be harder to kill than if some crossed genes from Joshua Graham and the legendary deathclaw."

I stuttered around trying to find a proper response to that, just barely managing to blurt out "Dear lord!" I saw House slide down the hill, and I went over to him and repeated the stories and he walked over to the masked man and asked him,

"Sir, I must ask, what is the name of this chemist you used to know?" House had a look of great interest and anticipation waiting on the man's answer.

"If you must know the man's name is Doctor Alexander Matthiason."

House chuckled a little and smiled, "I have good news for you, Alex is alive, and he's even on the way to deal with Lee. His residing facility is in the mountains west of D.C."

"Are you sure?" I couldn't see his face, but I could see a glint in his eyes that he was amazed and excited.

"Alex helped me to develop the stasis chamber I was in for 2 centuries, I made sure he had a way to survive. He was a great man. Good sense of humor."

"Yep, that's Alex alright."

I had to step in and ruin the moment unfortunately, "Now hold up just one second, before we do anything in regards to moving eastward, we need to deal with the issue of Elijah so those damn machines don't run rampant over the Mojave over the next few months."

They both sighed, annoyed but they knew I was right. The man gave us a map of directions to the Sierra Madre, said he would meet us there once we left Hoover Dam with supplies.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 17 Part 1: The Repercussions of Our Past**

We walked through the ruins of megaton, awed by how much destruction could have been caused by the ancient explosive. We saw citizens of our city push open blast doors and climb out to observe the debris. I witnessed young children climb the ruins like a toy. Steven sat in the center of town just looking at the small crater within the crater left behind by the explosion. He didn't say anything to us. Not a word was spoken for some time. Then it looked like he had realized something, and he started digging through the irradiated dirt, looking for something. He found two things; a piece of incredibly charred metal with a glowing red light on it, and a perfect condition holotape. Steven's look turned enraged before he even heard what was on it, he knew already. He put the holotape in his pip-boy and played it. It spoke very briefly, but the words were enough to reveal who bombed Megaton.

_"You had your chance, but you betrayed both mine, and Mr. Tenpenny's trust. It was high time I settled the score. Beware the power of the atom." _

Steven was in disbelief, forget shock. "Burke? HAHAHA! Oh, when I find Lee I'm going to kill him SO much. This is too good. Priceless, even." I looked at Steven like he had lost his mind. I personally threw Burke over the railing in front of Moriarty's saloon years ago.

But I couldn't deny him the culprit who turned his home to ruin, it was Burke all right. He picked himself up, drunk in the happiness that was his chance to kill Burke again. He walked over to his destroyed home, and stopped at a piece of embedded sheet metal. In a moment of absolute strength, he gripped the metal in his already bloodied hands and ripped it up out of the ground and sat it to the side. Where the piece of metal laid, there was a sewer grate. He pulled the iron grate off the hole and leapt downward. We all sat outside for a minute, half tempted to go in. He came back out with a few Chinese assault rifles, several nuka grenades, and a blade I had never seen before. The blade caught my eye because it was so thin and long, the thing looked as long as I was tall. I opened my mouth to ask him, but he walked right past us and leapt down another hole, this time back into the Citadel.

This time we had enough common sense to follow him. He opened a blast door and ran through the crowds of people in the city market, occasionally tapping a paladin on the shoulder and indicating them to come with him. In all truth, I forgot how many people really inhabit the city, how many people we saved with this haven. This had been the first time in ten years I had seen the city during business hours, when everyone and their parents are trying to sell something so they might have something to go back to when we finally leave here, if we leave here. By the time we reached the Elder's chambers we had amassed a large platoon of anywhere from 15-20 soldiers. Steven walked forward and Lyons looked at him, amused in a way.

"Let me guess, you found the culprit of the Megaton explosion, and your looking to take a platoon of my men and probably Liberty Prime to go deal with them in a very painful way. What amuses me and intrigues me is that you didn't just take the troopers and go, instead you seek out my approval beforehand, which means you may have learned something both your father and I tried to instill in you from the young age of 19; respect for your elders."

Steven scoffed, almost like a teenager "I don't need Liberty Prime, and I'm not here for your approval, I need my maps of zones 7 and 8."

Lyons, disappointed and confused, inquired "Why in god's name are you heading out that way? Were the Outcasts behind it?"

"No, the man had an independent score to settle. Personal. Not tied to Enclave, just good timing." He grabbed a large navy blue robe, slipped it on, and he looked exactly like he did years ago, he looked like an old world priest. But then I remembered the weaponry hidden inside, in total, 50 extended magazine .45 Auto Colt Pistols, and hologram armor sensors embedded throughout the outfit. He took the maps from Lyons' cabinet, before being stopped again by the Elder.

"If not the Outcasts, then who? All that is out there is Fort Independence and Tenpenny tower, both of which have been abandoned for over a decade."

"Like I said, personal score to settle." Steven didn't want to say anything more because he didn't want to accept his failure. Elder Lyons paused for a minute, and nodded. He knew what it was like, being absorbed by the desire to completely destroy an enemy from the face of the earth.

Steven turned around to the soldiers and went drill sergeant for a minute,

"All right maggots! We have a very clear, very direct objective. We are commencing a siege on the ruins of Tenpenny Tower! Now, I'm not going to lie to you, the man we're hunting is highly deadly, and the tower is most likely going to have more traps than the ambush set at Meresti 15 years ago. No one here will think less of you for stepping out now."

Two seconds later, one man began to move back to his post and Steven stopped the man and just outright exploded.

"All right boys, what we have here is a cold blooded chicken shit! I'm mean what happened, your balls drop off? You honest to god, believe you can't handle one old man and a few booby traps? You're a Brotherhood of Steel paladin for Christ's sake! Hell I could send a knight on this job and they'd be able to handle it. Are you trying to tell me you are weak?"

The soldier stood at attention and barked back, "Sir no Sir!"

"Then what's the problem maggot!"

"Nothing sir!"

"Good answer. Now all of you, march!" He slammed down a large red button on the side of the wall and the wall rumbled. The wall panels slid under the layer below it, and with them was revealed a tunnel headed to the southwest. Looking around, I wondered how many of these secret tunnels not even I knew about stashed away. We moved through the tunnel quickly, but it was a long way to Tenpenny Tower. Hours passed, just walking through the same endless tunnel, Steven leading the walk with a mad glint in his eyes I haven't seen since Jack was born. The maddening want, not need, to kill. Eventually we reached the end of the tunnel where there was a ladder leading up to the RobCo factory.

We each climbed the ladder up and looked out to the tower, where we saw it lit up in all it's old world glory. Every light was glowing brightly, a gem in an abandoned desert. We approached the facility very slowly, awaiting something extravagant in way of defenses. When we got too close we started seeing mines, lots of them, were talking on a scale that's difficult to imagine. All the mine's that we used to have planted in megaton rigged to go off if the enclave breached the city's gates, somehow he had more. Steven ordered us into a beeline, him at the front, disarming the mines as he went. Each followed closely behind the previous. As we made our way to the front gate, an intercom turned on and spoke to us.

"Well well well, the lone wanderer returns to the wasteland that made him a urban superstition. Here for your vengeance I assume? That eyesore of scrap has been needed to be demolished for far too long. Come in, you'll just DIE when you see what I've done with the place." He cackled and then turned off the intercom.

Then suddenly, we heard a beeping sound, faint, but beeping. Steven spun around with dismay, Burke had buried some of the mines. He barked to us,

"Run for the gates!"

We all fled for the gates, as the buried mine trigger more mines and from there it was a stack of dominoes. The outer area of Tenpenny's lavish tower was lit up like a bonfire and it was closing in. We got to the gates and used a breach charge to blast the door open. While the charge managed to get it open slightly, we were nowhere near getting through to the main complex. He had fortified the gates heavily, he was more than prepared. Steven yelled out over the explosions going off all around us,

"Climb you idiots! For the love of god, climb!" We all gripped the walls and scrambled as fast as we could over the cement defenses. As we climbed, we could hear the explosions closing in around us like a rope tightening around our necks. I glanced down to the final line of mines, and realized that they were in fact plasma mines, lined up by the dozens. Right as the second to last paladin was almost over, the rope pulled tight. The last wave of mines detonated and almost knocked the walls down around us. We lost two well trained paladins before we even made it in the gates, this son-of-a-bitch is going down. Steven's eyes grew colder, colder than I've seen them since the time when we were framed for the fiasco Adam's Air Force Base. This wasn't about megaton anymore, this was vengeance for his men. He ordered us to the door and we took our positions around the iron clad doors. We swiftly opened the doors, and attempted to clear the room, but then it hit us, chloroform in the air ducts. We were all down in a matter of seconds, however, being a ghoul, I was able to last a bit longer, and I saw the bastard, the elevator light glowed an aged orange, opened and there he was. Burke. Same outfit, same pistol, same damn smile...I couldn't fight the gas, I passed out.

**Chapter 17 Part 2: Vengeance for my Men.**

I was impressed. Burke turned my city to a giant pile of scrap, killed two of my men, and successfully gassed the remainder of us. I coughed and I saw Burke stroll out of his elevator, but he forgot something, my lungs and heart had mechanical implants straight from the commonwealth. I was poison proof. Now all I had to do was wait a minute and I could have him by the throat. I faked collapsing onto the ground and he stepped out, he looked at my body for a minute, and chuckled,

"The only reason you won the first time is because you caught me off guard. When I hang your men from Tenpenny tower, you'll have to go home knowing that they died because of your insolent pride." He turned to Jack and smiled cynically.

"Maybe I'll hang your spawn first." At that moment, my limbs sprang to life, clutched a combat knife, and I leapt for his throat. I hadn't felt this level of hatred since the Enclave massacred Meresti. Burke quickly stepped out of my reach and sent me headfirst into the main desk. I felt my limbs fly into action again, this time, just straight up fists. The hologram armor I bought out west lived up to it's indestructible guarantee while Burke took shot after shot at me as I swung at him. I couldn't even feel the bullets penetrate the armor, it just deflected off. Suddenly, he tossed the pistol aside and snatched a minigun from one of the downed paladins. Seeing no other choice, I opened the overcoat, disrupting the hologram defenses, but allowing me my weaponry. I pulled out a pair of .45 pistols and turned the man that was once Burke into Swiss cheese.

He lied on the floor a minute, and then, The creature that brought him back from the grave, revealed itself. It was a ghastly thing, looked like someone had used a human to dredge the river. Covered in muck, it was a stark change of pace from Burke's attire. It appeared slightly dazed, so I took the opportunity to grab Jack and Charon, tossing them outside the gates where they'd be safe.

When I returned, the beast had left with my men, and Burke stood in their place. I stepped inside, and the doors sealed shut behind me. I pulled out another pair of .45 pistols and emptied my clips onto Burke. Burke instead of trying to dodge, simply donned two power fists, and deflected my shots with some of the most precise martial arts I've ever seen. I looked over to one of the pillars to see he had drawn a happy face with my bullets. Conventional weaponry wasn't going to work now, he was drawing on that creature for energy and skill.

I knew I was going to have to use the Masamune blade. I crafted the blade using some hologram tech salvaged from the Big Mountain research facility, and as such it had a lot more potency when drawing on the power of the suit I also made back then. Problem was, when I made them, they operated on the same power source within the suit, so if I use the sword, I'll be vulnerable. I reached for the sword, aware I was going to take a few bullets by the end of this. As soon as I gripped the sword I felt the electrodes connect with the receptors with in the blade's handle, as soon as I saw glow a faint blue, I started attacking. Burke was caught off guard by the speed and power with which each blow was dealt. One of the blows that missed cut through a pillar like it was butter. I saw Burke's eye turn cold with fear, and he ran for the elevator. I charged after him, my speed unhindered by the holographic weight.

Alas, he was just too fast for me to catch. The elevator doors slammed closed behind him. Quickly, I pried the doors open and gripped the walls of the elevator shaft. I put the blade handle in my mouth and started climbing. It took a little bit of effort, but I got to the top quickly enough. I forced the emergency hatch open underneath the elevator and leapt in. I opened the doors to the suites level. I cleared each of suites slowly laying explosives as I went.

Finally, I opened the doors to Tenpenny's master suite. The suite had been wrecked. Broken dishes and papers covered the floor, along with many holotapes and maps. Everything I examined had to do with me on some small level. The holotapes were transmissions from Galaxy News Radio. And then, I saw the creepy part. Burke had written my title; LONE WANDERER, all over the west wall. Burke had developed an obsession with revenge, that I understood fully and sympathized. What I didn't understand fully, was how long had it been since Burke had been reincarnated? Most of these holotape dated between when Charon tossed him over that balcony and when we staged the massacre. I guess there was only one way to find out, and it was out there on the balcony.

The wind whistled between the two open doors to the balcony, I crouched down and crept out the door. When I got out there, I saw the beast from earlier and Burke himself, pushing things over the ledge, but I was too far away to see. I took a few steps closer, and I took one step too close, the creature stepped back from the ledge, took a deep roar, grabbed the rest of what they were dumping and disappeared in a black mist, dropping what I realized was one of my men on top of me as it rushed me. I threw the corpse off of me only to see Burke with a gun to my face. He then raised his hand to his mouth and coughed violently for a minute. I saw blood spew from his fist, and I took the advantage, I leapt up, Masamune in hand pinned him against the wall.

He chuckled and began speaking to me, "Now you got me where you want me again, and I can't turn away, I'm hanging by a thread, I'm feeling like a fool, and I'm stuck here in-between the shadows of my yesterday, I got no other place to hide,just like a sitting duck, and now, it's time for the fall." He barked loudly, "NOW HENRY!" I saw a briefcase on the table, and I saw Casdin walk out of the doors. He walked to the briefcase, opened it and turned the switch. Afterwards he leapt off the balcony.

I turned back to Burke, "What have you done you bastard?"

He coughed out, "It's a shame this virus only works once. Otherwise I'd be able to live through these next few seconds." I prepared to cut his throat, but I heard a deafening crash and then, an even louder explosion followed it up. I held him up to my face,

"YOU BASTARD WHAT DID YOU DO!"

He laughed hysterically and said, "Fort Constantine was a valuable asset, otherwise, finding a nuclear bomb would've been difficult. The other 10,000 pounds of explosives cost a pretty penny though."

I lost it, I silenced that infernal bastard once and for all, I took the Masamune blade and plunged it into him, nailing him to the wall. I prepared to leap, right as the explosion's damage reached me, and I lost my footing, and fell. I dove downward at high velocity, however I stuck the landing, tossing my overcoat onto Jack, the hologram armors blocking each piece of debris that fell upon. Suddenly, I realized I was missing Charon. When I left them by the gates, Charon was right beside Jack and now he was gone. Casdin must've taken him when he fell to the ground. I heard something, and instantly felt the pressure of a piece of stone wall crush me. At first there was pain, and then, nothing. Silence.


End file.
